The city is working with local partners to put together workforce development programs that could be instrumental in providing enough manpower to complete upcoming infrastructure projects with funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Pictured is Mayor Eddie Sundquist during his visit to the White House. Submitted photo

The city is taking steps to implement workforce development programs in the Jamestown region that could generate a more sustainable workforce in the community, particularly with regard to future infrastructure development.

Mayor Eddie Sundquist and a group of about 30 mayors recently met with senior leadership officials as the White House in Washington D.C. Sundquist said the board of the National League of Cities had a discussion with White House staff regarding workforce development and infrastructure.

“It is really an incredible thing,” he said.

Sundquist noted that there is a large amount of money “coming down the pipeline” to develop and rebuild infrastructure, including roads, bridges and the installation of electric chargers. However, while Sundquist said the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will have a major impact on infrastructure across the United States, he said senior leadership officials at the White House and other officials have warned that the country may lack the manpower to execute infrastructure projects.

“We have the money to build them, but we don’t necessarily have the people, so the White House is looking at cities to help be the creators of workforce development programs in order to move these funds forward,” he said. “We had a great discussion about how cities can help engage and use federal funding to develop additional workforce programs to ensure that we have the people we need in order to rebuild our infrastructure across this country.”

On a local level, Sundquist said he is proud of the program the city has been working on in coordination with the Builders Exchange to develop a workforce development construction program. To date, the city has allocated more than $1 million in workforce development funding through American Rescue Plan Act funding. Half of the allocated funding is intended to develop construction training, while the other half of the funding is expected to be used for general workforce development.

Sundquist explained that the city has been utilizing ARPA funding to develop a construction trades workforce development program, which will meet this week with a “host of partners” to discuss ways to effectively use the money that has been allocated for workforce development in the Jamestown community.

“We’ll be meeting with a bunch of partners, probably about 20 or so partners that do workforce development across the city, and saying how do we best utilize these funds to create a program that gets people into the pipelines we need and into manufacturers, into trades, into the systems and the places we need people to be at as we start to rebuild our infrastructure across this country and in the city,” Sundquist said. “The problem that we have as a city is that we’ve got all these wonderful programs and wonderful organizations doing workforce development, but we rarely bring them all together and have the conversation about how do we engage as many people as we can and what does each organization do.”

From Sundquist’s perspective, the current programs and organizations engaging in workforce development in Jamestown is “quite sporadic.” While there are programs for manufacturing, construction trades and other workforce skills, Sundquist said the city currently lacks an overarching plan for workforce development that encompasses everyone including students at Jamestown Public Schools, adult learners and people who are interested in reentering the workforce.

“That’s what we’re trying to do now is map that out and try to understand what’s out there for workforce development and how can we convene people together,” he said. “It’s too scattered right now, so from that perspective, the city is hoping to regularly start to meet with workforce development partners to try to work through a process.”

Sundquist also said the federal government is working on a workforce development accelerator program that will select 12 cities across the country to work directly with the U.S. Department of Labor to construct a workforce development program that could be “replicated’ in other cities in the United States. He added that the city is currently working on developing a plan with its local partners to “potentially apply” for the federal program.

“It’s called the Good Jobs Great Cities program,” he said. “We’re hoping to create a workforce development program here in the city and that we’ll be selected to help continue to develop that and potentially replicate that program in other places around us.”