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Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones has called for a public vote to wind down the city’s Ready to Work job training program. It’s about time, our guest columnist writes.<\/p>\n
Sam Owens\/San Antonio Express-News<\/p>\n
I wanted Ready to Work<\/a> to succeed. When San Antonio voters approved it in 2020 with 77% of the vote, I believed in the promise of using a modest sales tax increment to train San Antonians and place them in better-paying jobs. I believed in it enough to serve on the program’s advisory board.<\/p>\n Also, I believed in it enough to resign from that board in 2022, because it was clear the program was not being run in a manner to deliver what voters were told.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u00a0Don\u2019t get me wrong, it\u2019s not the people. It\u2019s that the processes were not set up to allow those running it to succeed.<\/p>\n So, when Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones proposes winding down Ready to Work<\/a> and redirecting its remaining money to help close a $158 million budget gap<\/a>, I don\u2019t hear a betrayal of the program’s mission. I hear someone saying what those of us who watched it closely have known for years: This program has not worked, its providers have never been held truly accountable, and city taxpayers should not keep pouring\u00a0money into it.<\/p>\n Ready to Work was sold as a path to 28,000 job placements. That goal has been reduced, but even today the program lags.\u00a0\u00a0As of this writing, it has produced 5,812 approved job placements<\/a>, and it has missed its own benchmark of moving 80% of graduates into quality jobs within six months, running closer to 62%<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n When a program keeps moving the goalposts and still can’t reach them, the honest conclusion is not “give it more time.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Then there is accountability, or the lack of it. When I stepped down from the advisory board, I said plainly that I could not do the job I had been asked to do because there was no real accountability from the contractors and training providers, and I could not get timely, reliable data on how they were performing. \u00a0I told city staff I did not have adequate information to make responsible recommendations. If a board member charged with oversight cannot get straight answers, neither can the public. Additionally, technology issues made it difficult, if not impossible, to track data.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now weigh all of that against a $158 million shortfall for the next two years, which an early budget draft proposed closing by raising property taxes to the maximum allowed by law.<\/p>\n Ready to Work is sitting on roughly $120 million in cash. That money is scheduled to be spent slowly through the program\u2019s 2030 sunset. Those funds could be used instead in other ways, alleviating cuts from the general fund.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Faced with that choice, we can either squeeze homeowners and renters to keep funding a program that missed its targets \u2014 all of them \u2014 \u00a0or redirect that money to needs the city can’t ignore. The mayor\u2019s idea is genius, and the responsible answer is not hard.<\/p>\n I am not saying San Antonians do not deserve job training. They do, and this city already has partners that do that effectively, such as Alamo Colleges, Workforce Solutions Alamo and others. These agencies have track records and can carry that mission forward at lower cost and with better oversight.<\/p>\n Ending Ready to Work is not abandoning the goal. It’s refusing to let a poorly run program hold the goal hostage. It\u2019s admitting we were wrong, accepting responsibility and doing something good for the community with the funds.<\/p>\n Jones has also been right to acknowledge that redirecting these funds will likely require a public vote, perhaps as soon as November. The voters approved this money believing in a promise. They deserve to see, honestly and in full, how far the results fell short of it and then decide what to do with all of that money in the bank.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n I sat on the advisory board that was supposed to make this program work. It didn’t, and like others, I am at fault because we did not get it done. Let the voters give the mayor the room to bring it to an honest end.<\/p>\n Brad Beldon is the former CEO of Beldon Roofing Co.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones has called for a public vote to wind down the city’s Ready to Work…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":["post-396090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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As of today, contractors have sat on allocated money they could not spend, and an entire on-the-job training component was scrapped after the city set aside $6 million and employers used only $1 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n