 Hey, that's better. I might anyway just adhere to you. Hi, I'm Betsy, I'm the executive director of this chamber, and I welcome you. Today's subject is near and dear to everyone in this room, so glad you're here. I have just got a quick announcement. You're aware of our organization called Coastal Young Professionals Network. How many of you are members of that network? We have a few in the room, alright. I think it is about enough. About a year ago, our board of directors determined that we would now allow people to join Coastal Young Professionals Network at no charge, and that's if their companies or their organizations are members of the chamber. Now, we have really ramped up the program. There are many, many exciting things going on, both in career development and in social kinds of activities. And I don't know how many of you went to the last October Feast. We had upward of 400 people. It was one of the most exciting young professional events that I've ever seen. Of course, I had to kind of be over against the wall. But yeah, it was just the energy in the room was absolutely phenomenal. Now as an employer, if you're an employer of young professionals, you have to ask them to invite them to join. There is no fee, all they need to do is go to a particular link. I have cards up here that you can hand to all of the young professionals and just invite them, saying, you know, because you're a young professional and because you work for us, you can be a member of Coastal Young Professionals Network and here are the benefits. All they need to do is go sign up with their name and their email address and a couple of other pieces of information and then they'll receive all the communications and all the promotions for the events down the road and hopefully they'll even become involved as volunteers for the organization. It's a powerful group of young people. So I have the cards. If anybody would like any, I'm at the second table here or I'll see you after the meeting. But please take advantage of these. They're great cards to just hand out. They're self-explanatory. Thanks very much. Thank you Betsy. So we're here to listen to two gentlemen this morning. We have Dan Czechlinti. He has originally came from Marainpo, Illinois. He's a very small suburb in the north, half a bellow rank. He began here in 2011 as the third director of the SCEDC. He has married with one daughter named Mary and we have Jose who has been here for eight years as a partners for community development. He worked with them and then he has just recently moved from May of 2014 to begin in the Hispanic chamber. He's also married with one child named Bianca. If you give a warm welcome to Dave and then to Jose. Thank you. Once again my name is Dan Czechlinti. I'm the director with the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation. I'm going to give things off here a little bit by framing up a little bit of the challenges that we're seeing. I hope we got connected with the Hispanic chamber. There I'll turn it over to Jose for all the details and probably what you want to hear. I work with the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation by showing how many know what that organization is. Essentially we were created to try to grow jobs in the local area and about a year and a half, two years ago roughly, the conversations we were having with companies started fundamentally changing. It went from I need capital into oh my gosh I have orders and I can't fill the jobs that I do have. And those conversations have only gone stronger and stronger. And as a result we have several irons in the fire in the workforce realm. You can learn more about those on September 22nd with the Sheboygan County Chamber and the SCDC and Inspire are hosting a workforce development summit that you are all invited to. But with this particular topic and this particular item. The things that companies were telling me about workers that at playing people apply but when they would show up they were not well dressed, horribly bad dressed. I'm serious, these are the comments right from major professionals. I'm not even joking and I purposely mentioned that one for several different reasons. I know that the response is the trouble but this isn't funny. After the day we have companies, we have over 2,000 available jobs in the county. And we have probably a thousand people sitting on the sidelines or underemployed that frankly don't want to be there. Right? And this solution is the only one I've yet seen that is a market driven solution to break the poverty cycle, give someone the tools and motivation they need to find a family sustaining job. That's what we're going to be talking about here at the Hispanic Chamber of Spray Meadow. And how this connection happened really was actually happened through the chamber. Well Jose and myself were both in the leadership program which I know they're in classes just starting. We got to know each other. Jose took another job. Long story short I attempted to hire him. It did not work. So I had some very awkward conversations with the Hispanic Chamber. You know when you kind of get in that awkward situation everyone's like oh we want to work with you, we want to work with you. And we just started laying out each other's problems and realized that there was something there. So we had Jose come up, do a couple presentations to some business leaders in the community. And that presentation that he showed them I believe is the baseline for his presentation today. But I just want to say that you know there are real workforce challenges. We can grow our local economy. But it's going to involve getting that last set of people off the bench and into the game. And I think Jose's group here has probably the best laid out plan I've seen yet to date to technically accomplish that. So without any more to do I'd like to turn it over to Jose. Jose? Alright good afternoon everyone. Is it afternoon yet? Thank you very much. I just wanted to thank the Chamber of Commerce for having us here. It's great to be in front of you today. There are a lot of people that I've known throughout the years. So I wanted to mention that. So we're going to be talking a little bit about the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and how we're collaborating and partnering here with CEDC the Chamber of Commerce in Sheboygan. And not one of those things that we do at the Hispanic Chamber is in collaboration. We want to make sure that we're collaborating with as many organizations as we can because we know we cannot do everything ourselves and solve all of these issues, huge issues we have specifically in the workforce development side by ourselves. So again as alright so we're going to be going through a little bit through some slides here but please stop me if you have any questions. We're going to be talking a little bit about this solution. I want to share a little bit about the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. A little bit about the problem that we're seeing on statewide basis. Talk a little bit about industry leadership and how we need to engage the leaders of our industry or manufacturing industries. How we create those strategic partnerships between the public and the private sector in order to solve this huge problem we have in front of us. And how that turns into this private public training initiative solution and then going back into the bigger picture and how we're working on this workforce investment fund that's going to help us deal with this solution in a more macro way and the economic impact that we'll create in the state of Wisconsin and what the immediate action would be in order for us to get there. So the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce are many of you that may not have heard of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. We're a 40-plus year old organization. We have our headquarters in Milwaukee. We're a 501C3 nonprofit organization where community development focused and our four main areas of work are economic, workforce development, academic, and community development. We represent the interest of about 600,000 Hispanics in the state of Wisconsin and about 10,000 Hispanic only businesses, most of them small businesses. And we have offices right now, as I mentioned Milwaukee, Sheboygan. My office is based out of here although sometimes for some weeks I don't spend any time in that office but I have an office here right at Jake's Cafe. We actually appreciate the partnership with Jake's Cafe as well. Green Bay, Watsa, we have an office in Appleton, Fox City's area. We just opened up a few months ago in Madison, Wisconsin. We do a lot of our public policy work out of that office and we're finishing up the details for opening up an office as well as the Brazilian Kenosha area. And our goal is to be in 16, the 16 metropolitan statistical areas around the state of Wisconsin. One of the things that we look at when we're opening offices is where are the nearest technical colleges to that area because our partnership involves, you know, where our work has to be involving the technical colleges around the state. So we have a good partnership with many of the technical colleges. We have established a connection here in Sheboygan as well with Dr. Lancer and his crew and we're going to be working together in order to develop some programs as well here in Sheboygan. And we have a good relationship as well with the Wisconsin Technical Colleges Association. So, a little bit of the magnitude of the problem here in Wisconsin. The Department of Workforce Development came up with some numbers at the entailment of last year. They estimated that in over the next eight years there were going to be 760,000 job openings and replacement positions to be built in Wisconsin. We know what the employment rate is today in Wisconsin is about 5, or nationally is about 5.3 percent if the lowest has been in many years and we know that for example the employment rate here in Sheboygan is under 4 percent or about 4.2. So, we believe that the magnitude of the problem is under-appreciated by both the public and the private sector. What we call is a lot of companies that are still living in the old economy type of frame of mind. We have jobs, what are we doing? What are people coming? And it's really because the unemployment rate is so low that there's not many people available. We know that the rate of people leaving the workforce because of retirements to the people coming into the workforce is about three to one. So, for every three jobs that are where three people were losing from the workforce because of retirement, there's only one person coming in. So that's a huge challenge that we're facing and obviously that is our ability to compete with all the states and all the countries. We know for the work we do that this is something that Canada is facing, this is something that Mexico is facing. We were actually contacted by the ambassador of Mexico and he said, how can you help me out bringing people back to Mexico? Really? Just elect Donald Trump and we'll be there. We're not bipartisan. We work with everyone and anyone. So when we're learning from employers and I think we're bridging to the choir here it's difficult to feel new and skilled labor jobs due to the growth of our companies. Companies are experiencing tremendous growth. We were hearing from companies here in the county as well. You grow it and you can't find people. And then you have the retirement problem and you have an aging workforce. An average is about 45 years old in the workforce. We here, for example, the welding industry, the average for welders around the state of Wisconsin is about 56 years old. We're individuals that have been in the workforce for a while. Sorry to interrupt you guys, if anybody's got a pickup truck for pickup truck green and drop, the windows are open. It's rained outside. You get wet inside. So if anybody's got a pickup truck outside with your windows open, you've got a pipeline and all the cool. Just let you know, there's nobody out here. Thank you, that's kind. So we know that the average for manufacturing employees, especially those in the manufacturing floor, it's high. And we know there's a shortage in engineering science information technology, what we call STEM. And now it's switching to a STEAM, science technology information arts and math. So there's also a shortage for those individuals in the arts programs. We know there's the industry cannibalization, which is product of the low unemployment rates in companies needing employees. And what we know is that there's a supply diversity problem that gets created, or a supply chain problem that gets created there because many big companies that are cannibalizing employees from other smaller companies because they can pay higher wages and they have better benefits, use those as small companies as supply. They supply it to your companies. So then we're disrupting the process. And obviously the local and state economy suffers. And one of the things that we've learned is that the skilled workers are often employable due to life skills. The technical skills, if you bring somebody to your company that has an open mind that's willing to learn and wants to learn, you can teach them those technical skills. that are missing. So as they stop touching on this, we see a lot of people coming through the doors. They don't know how to present themselves professionally. They don't know how to communicate. They cannot pass the drug screening test, etc, etc, etc. And that's really what we touch on in our training programs. So months ago we ran a little preliminary needs assessment here in Sheboygan County. We met with a few companies here in Sheboygan. Some of you are sitting here in the room, Johnsonville, Sargento. We had a couple of hotels here. Brooklyn Industries, American, and Atlantic was part of this whole thing. And we found that in just a small, about eight companies we had in our needs assessment, in just the next 36 months, just between these eight companies, we needed about a thousand people to come into Sheboygan to work. And all of these companies were the same. We know from studies run by Vane and the Economic Development Corporation is that the population of Sheboygan is actually declining. And the median age in Sheboygan is going up. So we need to bring in new talent, younger talent, back into Sheboygan. One of the things we do in the Chamber of Commerce here, and we represent, as I said, with the Hispanic community, the average age of the Hispanic in the United States and in the States is around 26 years old. And the average age of the Hispanic born in the United States is about 17. So, and where do you grow as the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States as well? So you know where your world forces come from now. So let's see. So going back a little bit into the talent initiative, we have created what we call the HCCW, CEO of Economic Leadership Committee. So we engage companies like Johnson Controls, the CEO of Johnson Controls, Mr. Alex Molinarolli is the one that chairs the committee. We have the Chairman of ITW, it's Illinois Toolworks. And the reason Illinois Toolworks is engaged in this is because they have a huge company out in Appleton called Miller Electric. Miller Electric has been a wonderful partner to our training initiative. They supported us through our first round of fast forwarding, which we were able to engage individuals, you know, training to create welders. And for all of you that are aware of welding and the skills that someone needs to learn for welding, you may know that this is one of the hardest skilled positions to train. We trained and graduated around the state in about 16 weeks, 120 welders, and we have 85% of waste and grade for those welders. And they're doing very well. We have individuals that have gone from unemployed individuals that run out of unemployment benefits to some of them making $26.28 an hour now. So very successful program. So through this strategic partnership, as I mentioned before, we have partnered with the workforce development boards, the Department of Workforce Development, the many technical colleges around the state, MMAC, everything's running and around workforce development. Our training program was recognized by the American Welding Society and we've been supported as well. We have received support from them as well and they are now talking about how do we run top to do it on a nationwide basis. Let us finish with Wisconsin person. So the key components of this partnership is collaborative executive leadership. We want to make sure that those leaders are in the forefront of this training initiative and the forefront of this initiative workforce development initiative and that's to attract that private public funding. Our training program, as I said, includes this essential life skills training with program support and the program support is really case managing all these individuals. We case manage individuals from the day they come into the training program from the day they're engaged until after they're placed in their place of employment. So we want to make sure that those individuals, even after they graduate from the training program, they're able to maintain that job and so we work with them in order to do that. We, in partnership with the technical colleges, we help these individuals get the technical skills that they need and also we work with employers that offer on-the-job training so we know that it's not everything that you need to learn. You need to learn in the classroom, you need to do it, depends on. So we're trying to develop this pipeline of high growth Hispanic and non-Hispanic workforce with outstanding work ethic. Very important to mention that even though we're Hispanic Chamber of Commerce we're Hispanic focus. We welcome anyone and everyone to our training programs and any of the programs that we have in Hispanic Chamber. We create this collaborative employer relationship and what that is is we are in touch with human resources professionals because we want to know how our individuals are doing their training program doing. So we want to find out first and first of all how can we help that specific individual and second of all how is it that we tweak our training program in order to start producing better individuals and put them in the workforce. We, in the case of Chavoida for example, we have started the partnership with a couple of manufacturing companies, Johnsonville and Sargento in specific, we have presented a proposal for funding and we're going to start recruiting individuals for those two companies training them and placing them at those two companies but we know that because of the low unemployment rate eventually we're going to have to move into the relocation and resettlement. So we know unemployment rate as we were talking about here in Chavoida is about 4% but we also know that in pockets in Milwaukee for example there's pockets in that community where unemployment rate is above 10%. So we can engage those individuals taking through our training program make sure that they meet all the requirements of our training program and then help and resettle relocate to Chavoida for example as this is happening around the state. And very purposefully we say relocation and resettlement because it's very different to grab somebody from Milwaukee and bring them into Chavoida and drop them in the middle of Chavoida and then create a support system around that individual in order for that individual to acclimate to the new community and fill part of the community which enhances the possibility of that individual staying in that community and that's what we want. And also the placement and engagement and retention of that individual wherever that individual ends up. So that's how about the model of our training initiative. We like to look at we do a lot of pyramids I think it's spending time or somebody once told me oh yeah you took me through the tour of Egypt the other day when I was here because we do a lot of pyramids. But really this is the core of our training initiative and as you see we have the many corporate partners the government grants so which makes this a private public initiative is the participation of those two sectors. So our individuals it's a graduated process so what we do is we through our outreach a grassroots outreach type of initiative we engage individuals into our training program and bring them back from the bottom out of the pyramid. So we bring this underutilized workforce that's recruited, it's motivated and inspired to come into the training program and one of the specific things we do is we use an attraction model. So instead of advertise we attract people to come to us. We motivate and it's a trusting relationship that gets created. We use individuals that go out in the streets and engage individuals one on one. And so once we bring these individuals and we do an assessment of them we basically go through a one-on-one orientation, the same type of, I'm sorry, a one-on-one interview, the same type of interview that any HR professional would go through and we assess the individuals. Where are they at, what would they need and depending on where they are at are they ready to come into our training program or we need to work with them a little farther in order to get them ready for the training program. So once we do that then we bring them into our training. A very important part of the training is that we actually pay our trainees to go through the training program and that's two things. We're talking a lot about underutilized individuals and what we mean by that is individuals that are working a minimum wage job, $758 an hour. So those are individuals that are living every day at risk and they're living under the pressure of living paycheck to paycheck to paycheck. They're living in crisis. So if I tell that individual, leave your job for four hours a day and come and train and sit in this classroom and they have to make the option, am I going to go and make $8 an hour so I can pay for the next meal for my kids or do I go and sit in a classroom for four hours and not make any money. So we mitigate that by saying if you come and sit down here for four hours and you actually participate. So if they participate actively participate in everything else, we'll pay you $10 an hour to sit down here. And by the way at the end of the training program there's a job that can be $12, $13, $15, $18 an hour. Then the picture is a little different. And then they graduate after they go through our essential life skills training they graduate into the technical training or on the job training. So this is where they go to a technical college and which through the private public partnership we pay for the tuition and through the partnership we get with the technical colleges we customize the training. So these individuals are going to technical training at the technical colleges but it's only about 12 to 16 weeks. It's an intensive training program but once they graduate they have the essential skills and the basic skills in order to go into the technical training. So talking a little bit more extensively about the outreach recruitment or settlement part of it is again as I said it's a very grass roots type of effort for people in the streets that attraction strategy. With our standards because we hire these people into our essential life skills training program they become part of our payable. So we engage them into an employer-employee relationship and we're able to draw around drug screening tests and we verify background checks and we actually have them take a tape test as well to take that test for adult basic education. Some other technical colleges use the access or what's the name of the other test? Accuplacer. Accuplacer they do. And we also ask them about their willingness to relocate and resettle. It's not something that's mandatory that they need to relocate and resettle but we ask them so we know who would be willing to upload and go somewhere else. One of the reasons we do this very important to mention I guess is because we keep the same standards as a manufacturing company would. We don't want to have to put our resources to work for somebody that at the end of the training program is going to want to fail the drug screening test and then be back to zero. If for example something like that would happen then we refer that individual to AODA counseling or that once that person is rehab then that person is welcome to join back to the program. With our support system is a one-on-one case management and we also do interactive group setting support. We pair our individuals with mentors and this is once they come into the on-the-job training site. They're paired with somebody that works in the industry and their mentor. We offer tutoring and remediation classes so if their English levels are low or their math levels are low for example we do that as well. If we're working on the affordable housing and affordable transportation piece this is through the partnership with Donaldson Controls we're working now to get Mark Fields as CEO of Ford Motor Company to meeting here in Milwaukee late this year and what we're working on is preparing a program that would provide about 4,000 vehicles, an affordable rate, new vehicles for people that go through our workforce. So and the reason why we're doing that is for example we had Teddy and individuals that went through our training program down in Milwaukee, very good individual, did great in our training program, graduated lives in Milwaukee, got a job and managed with trains in Milwaukee. He bought a vehicle, about $1,600 vehicle started driving back and forth, managed it about two weeks later, car broke down $3,000 to fix the $1,600 car and he didn't have the money of course. So this is something that we're seeing over and over and over so if we can create this partnership, the partnership we're working on where these individuals can pay $1,600, $1,770 for a brand new car, it won't be a top vehicle, it'll be your Ford Focus or your Ford Fiesta but it will be something reliable that you know will take you back and forth from work. We provide financial education and financial access and something very important about financial access is a lot of these individuals for example because of their past history are not able to open up a checking account. There's many employers out there that will hire people where you're able to direct positive checks. So if you're not able to direct positive checks just because of that they may not be selected for the job so we work on those type of situations as well. And we evaluate them on their academic achievement and behavioral performance so we keep them at the same standards as a manufacturing company would. Excuse me, I have a question about the background check. Certainly, familiar with that when it comes to recruiting an employment how do you work around a background that maybe doesn't fit a person so you're successful? How do you work around that background check? Is there a means that's provided to help overcome those kind of barriers? Yeah, we have several trainees for example that are still working with POs. For some reason in WASA we had several individuals that went through our training program that were actually in it. So we work closely with their POs and their POs provide letters of recommendation and we will provide a letter of recommendation and a certificate saying this individual has graduated from the training program and there's definitely something to say about somebody that has gone through a 16 week training program that showed up every single day that somebody that really showed the commitment and tried to complete a training program, you know, you might have a past but now you're here and here now and you meddle the standards and we're seeing that manufacturing companies now are starting to look outside of POs and saying yes, you know what, come on in and prove to us that you're worth our investment. Essential life skills, as I said before it's a lot of skills that we've talked about, communication skills, computer skills, version of finances time management and punctuality problem solving, troubleshooting and that kind of stuff. And really our meeting potatoes and we've been talking about this for a little while about the meeting potatoes of our training program. And the technical training as I mentioned before around the job training is in partnership with local technical colleges through this customized curriculum and it's flexible in order for those individuals that are working, that may be working full time or part time in that minimum wage job so we offer these trainings and we work with the technical colleges to operate the afternoons, at the evenings, Saturdays, weekends, etc. And now one of the things that we also encourage is the continuing education after placement and very purposefully we work closely with companies that offer tuition reimbursement. Very important to also mention is that these pieces, the technical college credits are. So when we work with technical colleges we made sure that the technical training these individuals received is backed up with credits. So individuals are graduating from our training program for five, six, seven, eight credits. So once they find the job, once they are in place in the job, once they improve their good investment for the company they're working for, they can go back to those technical colleges and complete their education. And at the end of the program there's one, there's no student debt. There's no education debt. So these individuals completed their certifications, completed their training program, they didn't pay a penny out of the pocket. So we're seeing proven results, as I said, we have an 85% placement rate. We're producing responsible, punctual accountable individuals. They have great drive to succeed, they're committed. They're filling our internal positions. They have college credits so they actually proven that they're able to learn. That's something that we also hear a lot from our employers as we need individuals that are able to learn. And they become, you know, they prove the companies that they're worth their partner investment. As I said, right now it's about 85%, 86% for our placement rate. So what we see here is avoiding county as a success factor. And we've met with, as I mentioned before, with many manufacturing companies here and we work closely with the economic development corporation is developing these two pieces here are very key, the affordable housing. It's a huge huge component we need to focus on. They had shared some data last year where according to a study, I believe there were about 12 units of affordable housing available in Chavoy Town 12. We're talking about affordable housing. So the type of rate that somebody working at an entry-level manufacturer in Chavoy may be able to afford. We need to fix that. The financial access and microfinance where the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce has a revolving loan fund and we're able to help through this revolving loan fund individuals that need access to microfinance and we also work with other financial institutions in order to provide that. We've talked about the resettlement and community engagement and retention piece as well that we need to work on. In order to work on all of these things we have created this workforce investment fund and we're working towards this workforce investment fund. This is the ecosystem for the investment in which we have, again, private and public investors that will invest in this workforce investment fund and basically what happens here is I want to show a picture of some meetings that we had with the governor and many manufacturing leaders throughout the state. There's a representative from Miller Electric, for example, Mr. John Peterson from Shooting Metals in Wasan. So the investment fund is we are able to access the type of investment we want to access because the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce meets the regulatory compliance based on the controller because we're an LMI focused institution, low and moderate income institution. There is about 30 billion dollars of untapped resources that are ready to be deployed in this specific sector and just in 2013 alone, for example, 7 billion was invested throughout the state or through all the nations but there's a huge amount of money left there that never gets tapped. So we are targeting to bring about 500 million dollars here to the state of Wisconsin and deploying it throughout the state of Wisconsin in order to help us solve some of these issues and one of the key components where that money can be used is for affordable housing. So bringing in the leadership of Mr. Molinarolli, bringing in the leadership of Mr. the COO of Ford and the leadership from elected officials and leadership of manufacturing companies like yours, for example, will be able to put enough pressure into these investments in order to release those investments and bring them into Wisconsin. So again it's going to help us with deal flow which is bringing in more workforce into your manufacturing companies, make sure that we have the housing stock we need in order to house those individuals making sure those individuals have access to transportation and that access through the financial access they need in order to continue the growth. So what this would create in the state of Wisconsin, it's about 109 million in average annual new state and local income in sales and property taxes generated by this 500 million dollars in about 1.2 billion estimated income taxes in the state and local government in the next 10-year cycle of this fund. So what we're needing from leadership is the leadership and support. So we have and we're establishing this and there's not so many meetings involved is just the leadership when it's needed. We will engage you in this public policy, Wisconsin public policy so we can bring this effort up to the state and national government and engage strategic philanthropy in order to develop the fund. So we've moved through some of this, we are getting the job descriptions of companies that we're working for. We have developed the training curriculum and we're going to be recruiting and resettling people into Chicago County with the companies that we're working with right now. We need more partners. We're looking at partnering with other organizations and the other thing we're going to also be doing is in a few months from now we're going to be sending you a letter asking you for your signature in support of this investment fund. So that's what we have here in the presentation and I don't know if there's any other question. You mentioned the technical training obviously, a welding. What are the other technical areas of focusing? You also talked about customization potentially. So are you do you have examples of where particular organizations or industries that said boy we really need we really need help with developing this kind of technical skill Yeah, it varies through our communities here in Chicago for example we're working in the food manufacturing industry we have deployed resources for road construction. We run a training program and we graduated about 16 individuals that went directly to placement for the road construction. We're also working on a statewide initiative to develop a CBL training program for CBL drivers. So we have a lot of fires on right now that we're working on statewide. What's the participation from the department of workforce development in the state of Wisconsin? Are they subsidizing anything presently or is this something that you are working on creating that stream of funding? We have a really good partnership with the Department of Workforce Development through Fast Forward in the 2014-2015 cycle we were the largest recipient in the private sector. We received $400,000 which is the maximum you can receive from Fast Forward. We have applied again this year for $400,000 for the continuing of that program and actually also applied in partnership with other manufacturing companies for other dollars for different projects as well. I just have one last question on this side with the development of the program that you've done and that's in collaboration with business leaders. Do you find that there's any challenges from the funding people about what you have? In other words, is there alteration that you have to do in order to satisfy for that funding to come or do you feel you're strong enough to stand on your own? No, it's challenging. We all know that it's challenging to get funding. The Department of Workforce Development they have the limitations on what they can fund and most of the funding that comes through the Department of Workforce Development and Fast Forward is for technical training. So those funds get routed directly to technical colleges for technical training and what we need assistance with and that's where the private partnership comes in and a lot of companies get it and some companies don't and that is the funds in order to deploy the necessary resources in order to go out in the communities and recruit and engage the people that need to get engaged into this training program so we can create that pipeline of individuals coming in. In Milwaukee for example and just to give you an idea we're working with a company called Super Steel they came to us last year about May of last year and said we need 50 welders and we thought to ourselves we're training 120 around the state we need another 50 just from Milwaukee so we went to a presented proposal for Fast Forward where we were granted. They were running their human resources department was offering a thousand dollar signing bonus for people coming through the doors that got hired they couldn't get people in the door. We run our deployment we deployed our resources and run our recruitment efforts we didn't offer any money whatsoever and the first day we got 40 people in the door 48 people in the door. So it's just because of how you do the recruitment and where you do your recruitment it's really where it is and that's where we're looking for those resources in order to deploy the necessary people and the necessary resources in order to bring people into those jobs. Could you talk a little about that recruitment? What is that? Is it people on the streets? Yeah it's literally people on the streets we call it the HCCW street teams. So we hire people we use people that have graduated from our training programs and our staff and we go out in the communities and we visit fast food restaurants haters. We go into fast food restaurants we go into laundry mats we go into gas stations we're in the community and talking with people face to face and we what we were saying before is we empower them into the process so it's their decision to come in and we're not trying to pull them into the program. So we give them all the information for them to make an educated decision and want to participate into the program and then we create that one-on-one relationship so through that process they're always talking with the same person and it's someone that went through the training program somebody that looks like them talks like them what has come in it has been in the same situation as they are and not too long ago. So in a lot of the recruits that we're getting now are people that are somewhat related to the trainees we have before. ... ... ... Yes, so do you understand you go to a community and accept the training there or do you look primarily to partner with a business and then how do you look at the workers? Are you looking at an office in Shevoi that you have essential training skills sessions here? Yes, and we do both. We run training programs like the World Training Program for example where we run it for the community and then as individuals are graduating into the process we start engaging employers to place those individuals but really what we prefer is to work with companies that are in need of those individuals and when we do a recruitment and we customize our training program we're doing it with that company in mind. So if you're a company that needs 30 that's going to hire 30 individuals in the next 12 months we will work with your recruitment or with the HR department in order to and actually the HR department is very involved in the whole entire recruitment process and training program and we customize every single step to be the culture of that company in our organization. So we've done it in both for us it's very difficult to train one or two or three people our groups need to be a little bit bigger than that in order to be efficient in order to achieve those efficiencies but we've done it in both type of sessions. I'm just curious why a separate chamber had to be formed what about people from Bosnia or Caucasians or I mean it sounds like a great program for a lot of people. We work closely with the African-American Chamber of Commerce for example and there's the non-American chambers of commerce. What about diversity? Why do we have this it just seems odd to me that we have to segment that? As I said the trainings in for that matter every single one of our programs is open to everyone and anyone that comes through the doors. So I can tell you because I've seen it. If you go down to our training classroom in Milwaukee about 40% is Hispanic, 40% is African-American and the rest is mixed. If you go up to our training program at Mewasa 70% is white 20% is small and 10% is Hispanic. It just happens to me that the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce program but our training programs are open to everyone and anyone in the community that fits the eligibility requirements for the program. You mentioned earlier about the housing shortage here. Obviously if we have a declining population the risk to the builders is there for sure but could you explain maybe a little bit more why this continues to exist and maybe offer a couple solutions to that. In terms of the housing I'd probably the best one to answer that. Yes over the last few years the population that came did decline in 2014 it did go up so I think we've turned that corner once again growing. Now the reality is with apartments first good news is there's projects on the way I'm going to tell you that right now I suspect no less than probably 400 units breaking ground in the next year. We've been very active seeking out developers and getting things going. Two potential projects in our downtown those are more luxury that would not be here at all. An existing apartment broke ground on Union Avenue they're building it right now and I've got two projects up in the town of Shipwagon that will probably be breaking ground. So I think we're going to see a lot different moment in the landscape here. Having said that the reality of building apartments right now is there about $80,000 to $90,000 a unit to build which means you've got to rent them a one-two bedroom for $800, $900 a month. Now our current market right now if you're an apartment owner give your hand. They might own an apartment. If anyone owns an apartment. If I were you I'd start jacking up those rents because no one's got any other choice right now. Seriously I'm not even joking on that. These apartments have been full for probably about a year. But the reality is is that to build them now here on 850 the current market says six to seven hundred and so lenders, who are my lenders out there? Right you know that you're going to land on six hundred to seven hundred. You're not going to land on eight hundred but they need to get the performance to work quite simply because that's what the market says that gives support. So that's the catch-22 we're in right now. That's why many of these developers especially in the downtown projects have been working closer with the city to try to essentially tip this person in place to try to provide an incentive to get them over that gap. Once that new market is established the next units probably won't need an incentive because none of the lenders can get in and perform the proper ROI. And we're not the only community you look at Oshkosh, Blasov, they're all in the same boat we are. We see apartments being built like crazy right now in Madison and Milwaukee it's because those apartment rates have been achieved and so the numbers weren't there so they're having an enormous left and right. On the plug on the state level Wisconsin does not have a very robust apartment thing overall and the big reason is there's no secondary market in an apartment so it's very small because the average developer loves to build a cookie cutter unit occupy it three years later sell it build the next one create the capital to build the next one. That's how it's done in almost every other state except for Wisconsin. And Wisconsin developers have to hold on for the useful life of that facility 20-30 years maybe they'll sell it off to someone as they rehab it maybe they'll stick more money into it maybe get another 20 years out of it. The combination that we have that apartment buildings are assessed at 100% of their construction value combined with the fact of our high property tax climate basically means there's no secondary market because if you're one of those secondary firms go out and buy an apartment it's quite simply the tax rates you can get 11% in Minnesota or 10 and a half in Wisconsin and you're buying the Minnesota unit that kind of some of the developers built in the next one so that's why Wisconsin has a very stagnant apartment complex developers who do stuff all over the place tell me the reality is I think apartments are coming the other part is when we talk about workforce housing you know we start to get into the realities of okay someone's making $13 to $18 an hour depending on the manufacturing firm what can they really afford it's just them maybe 800 a month maybe there's two going in together maybe 800 a month is probably where they would be so a two bedroom and 800 might work then we get into tax credit housing and politically that's a very top sell in a community like this but the reality is if we want to grow our community it's something that we may need to consider but I will say that there's plenty still we have a very robust slumlord population here in the community so they're still always available it's probably not at the level that we want to show off our community I don't have to answer your question follow up to that would it take something like the employers let's say somebody needs 30 welders or 20 12 where are these folks going to live obviously we have a shortage of housing maybe the employers could gather a coalition using this funding investment source that you're referring to and you know throw up a 60 unit apartment building or something just throwing them out there I'm aware of several companies that are ultimately said they're willing to invest especially if our project didn't limit so if anyone wants to pull this together something from there most of our employers have said they'll free lease and just give us some plans and we'll lease 20 we'll sign a master lease and obviously that takes the bank very much as there's one third of the unit guaranteed none of these developers, these five projects have taken advantage of that they basically have said when I said I've got local investors willing to invest and I've got companies willing to free lease they just kind of skip that part and like okay we need to be here it's kind of interesting you know say you've got local investors if you give them a plan they'll put money into it they just like well then why wouldn't I put my money into it and forget them it's kind of the reaction we're getting which is great but I'm very curious to see how these first couple especially the luxury ones in the downtown and see what that does because if they occupy you immediately I think we'll see more building right after it I think my biggest challenge just on all that family is right out of the limit that's the area I'm not focused in on so without anything I just want to first say thank you for your time thank you to the family chamber thank you to the mic back you can use it all you did a great job and kept everybody mesmerized for a long after the time that we like to keep them so that was even better thank you everybody for sticking around just a couple quick notes two coastal things that are coming up August 12th we have behind scenes at RCS and that was Craig who was asking all those questions in the background so please come and see what they're doing out there it means that there's an active five at the Sheboygan Rightful and Pistole Club very exciting and next Friday is actually going to be changed due to Labor Day so that will be September 11th it will be the first impressions of Sheboygan County Sheboygan and Kenosha's chambers will present info gathered from focus groups held with newcomers and a collaboration with Kenosha first impressions all geared towards the attraction of potential work towards it so we invite you all to join us that's on September 11th right after and I hope you all have a lovely August I hear there's a big thing going on in a few days I think it involves walls okay well I hope you all enjoy that if you get a chance to go have a great afternoon take care