San Antonio will delay start of its $154 million job-training program until next year
- Facebook / COPS/Metro Alliance
- Community groups including COPS/Metro Alliance pushed for the passage of SA Ready to Work last year but pushed back after the city proposed hiring dozens of new staffers to run it.
Turns out remaking San Antonio’s economy and job market is a tall order.
The $154 million SA Ready to Work program designed to help low-skilled workers find new, better-paying jobs faces a four-month delay as local officials iron out details, the Express-News reports. The sweeping training program approved by voters last November now won’t begin until January 2022.
Christina Reck-Guerra, interim assistant director of the city’s Workforce Development Department, told the Express-News that officials are pushing back Ready to Work’s start after a year-long precursor program, funded by federal pandemic-relief aid, failed to meet its goals for placing trainees.
City officials will use the delay to recruit more trainees and to bring on outside groups to facilitate Ready to Work, according to the daily’s report. The four-year program is funded by a 1/8-cent sales tax, which would provide grants for workers to train through local community colleges.
San Antonio initially planned to hire more than 60 staffers to oversee SA Ready to Work, but COPS/Metro Alliance and other groups that supported its creation complained that the hires would turn it into bloated bureaucracy.
In the end, city officials chose to award contracts to outside organizations to facilitate the training.
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