 I'm going to get a motion for approval of this. Second. Second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And it's approved. We just roll it into our presentation. So thank you, sir, for being here. Bring introduction. First, let me say, no mic, test, test, test. Good morning again. Good morning. Thank you for allowing us this opportunity to share with you our proposal for generating job opportunity for some of our most challenged citizens. Some of these challenges may include alcohol abuse, drug abuse, lack of self-esteem, and yet others may be a lack of education, or low work skills, or low confidence. This proposal represents a collaborative effort between St. John Community Development Corporation and the City of Columbia, led by our very innovative city mayor. I am Jackie Epps, and I chair of the St. John CDC Community Development Corporation. And a company of me is our career center director, Gwen Floyd. Our pastor of St. John Baptist Church is unavailable and not able to attend today, but rest assured, let me say emphatically, that he fully supports this initiative. And I say that with total confidence. It's good to know that we have a Vanna White with us today, so, I guess some of you, it's too young for this. Hopefully you don't have to spell anything. Our CDC mission is essentially to revitalize the Book of Washington Heights community with major emphasis on youth, young adults, and senior citizens. The Book of Washington Heights community has a very rich history of success, and has been experiencing significant high level of crime and violence recently. Our church is centrally embedded within the Book of Washington Heights community, and we were challenged by a county council member to get involved, to implement solutions and solve problems within the community. So we accepted the challenge to make a positive difference in our community. A major area has been on jobs and employment opportunities and workforce readiness, because we fundamentally believe that as employment increase, crime and violence will decrease proportionately. We think they're inversely related, which is why we organized and launched the Career Development Center. We opened the Career Center by offering soft-skilled workshops, such as resume writing, interviewing skills, rest or impress, thinking on your feet, interpersonal skills. And we later expanded our curriculum to include technology courses like PowerPoint, Excel, Word, keyboard, and et cetera. And now we're offering drone flight training classes to get FAA certification for good jobs. I met Rickerman, visited our Career Center a couple years ago, and thought our program could play a vital role in helping challenged youth and young adults adjust their lives and position themselves for today's workforce. So with that as a background and as a backdrop, let me now present to you the key elements of our Pathway to Employment proposal. This initiative represents a public-private partnership between the City of Columbia and St. John Community Development Corporation. Our primary focus is on young adults aged 18 to 25, albeit not limited to that age range, who are facing barriers and life challenges that may include substance abuse and other personal challenges. This program provides an opportunity for candidates to participate in a program designed to earn real income while operating on the old concept, yet still valid, a full day's work for a full day's pay. Hopefully, participants will gain a great appreciation for good, strong work ethics and value the significance of commitment and responsibility. Are we on slide three? We're on slide three. This initiative is planned around a 12-week program with a 40-hour work week that includes a combination of field work and professional development. This program has a goal for all the participants to evolve or transition into a full-time job offered by the city or some local business or some other local industry. A typical work week will be as follows. Monies and windies, wind days, will include a combination of a four-hour professional development session, which will focus on soft skills and also technology skills, followed by four hours of field work, focused on city beautification and sanitation work. Tuesday, Thursdays and Fridays will be eight hours of field work only. So those three days will be full on-the-job work experience. Monies and Wednesdays will be half-day work and half-day professional development. Participants will be observed and monitored by their supervisor and career center instructors, and we will assess the need for support from community resources. We will appoint those special resources as needed, like drug-addition counseling and other personal needs based on our conversation with them and based on our observation with them. But we, in some respect, we view our role as a personal coach to each person participating in this program. Slide five, transportation. Our participants, participating in the program, will be responsible for arriving at the church prior to 9 a.m. each day. A work transportation van will depart the work site, will depart for the work church at 9 a.m. for work and then return at 5 p.m. A city bus stop is located at Farrell Road in Douglas Street, which is just in front of our church, for those who need to commute by bus. We will have bus passes and tickets available for all those commuting by bus. The CDC will purchase a van from the city at a nominal cost for transporting the workers to and from the work site locations. At the end of this session, the end of the program, the vehicle will be returned to the city at the same cost as purchased. If it perches for $1, we will return sales for $1. Slide six, supplies. The city will provide all jobs, sites, supplies as well and any needed safety equipment, such as goggles and vests. The CDC supervisor will hand out supplies and equipment each morning and then collect them when they return in the evening and store them for the next work day. Next slide. By the way, feel free to interrupt me if you have any questions about anything. Session development. Our Career Center is well-prepared for this role as we are currently offering soft-skilled workshops and interviewing skills, resume writing, dress to impress, mock interviews, work ethics, et cetera. Additionally, we offer technology courses that include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, introduction to computer, keyboard, et cetera. And oh, by the way, we have a partnership with South Carolina Works. We are a hub for South Carolina Works. Any of our community members can come into our Career Center and search for jobs, as well as file for unemployment. And we also have a partnership with Richland One Adult Education Program if they're interested in earning a GED. So we're well connected. We have our outstanding partnership to enable these participants to better prepare themselves for the workforce. We will engage a banking industry consultant and a tax consultant to discuss personal finances because each participant will be issued or receive a 1099 at the end of the year. We'll view them as independent contractors. They will be responsible for their social security and paying other taxes. So at our first meeting, we will review all those responsibilities. And we have a bank person come in and talk about checking accounts and saving accounts so they can cast their check, open up accounts, cast their checks. Again, that will be on day one. We will start out with these kind of personal money management kind of questions. Any questions? Next slide. Pogethilp Investment. Now I'll open this session by indicating that this is a collaborative effort each partner have in skin in the game. We both have invested interest in a successful outcome. Each partner, each party, I should say, is investing significant resources to make this program a success. As you can see on our screen, there are many contributions from each party. And of course, there's a financial component to this program. So we're requesting from the city an annual, the annual cost of this project is the neighborhood of $275,000. We are requesting funding for a three-month allocation, three months to support a three-month pilot program in the amount of $64,215, you know, in my previous life while I was working at Kraft Foods, prior to launching any new product, we would always conduct a test market. And I view this pilot program as a test market where we can get immediate feedback on projected success. This three-month pilot program should provide a good projection of our return on our investment. Next slide. We fundamentally believe that this initiative represented great opportunity to make a positive difference in the lives of many challenged, unemployed citizens of our community. We're grateful for the effort to our innovative mayor and for his foresight and very strong leadership in this effort. If we aim to accelerate progress, we must implement these kinds of innovative and transformational programs. We believe that this initiative is one that, if successful, can be expanded broadly across the city and beyond. It has been a pleasure working with the mayor and his support team hammering out this proposal and we're very excited by the opportunity to participate in this pilot program. And we're ready to get to work. I thank you for your attention, I thank you for your interest and I'll respond to any questions that you may have. Mr. Epps, how many participants do you think you'd have during the pilot program? We budgeted for eight. We would say eight as a maximum. We see four as a goal. We would begin the program with four as a minimum. What do you think, if you're projecting eight, is there a maximum that you... Eight, maximum is eight. Maximum is eight. Maximum is eight. If the concept is full-time employment, do you have some business community partnerships lined up that might be the next landing place for these eight? The city would be one source of... But we will be actively engaged in identifying other business consultants, business partners. Okay. Currently, we don't have any on our list, but I think one of the things that I would like to do is we talk about we want the business community more involved and I think the business community talks about being more involved and we have a hard time connecting those two dots. I think as part of this program, I would like to help and connect those dots between this and the business community and if you could expand it, then you've got even more opportunities. Absolutely. If you had... Suppose you had 20 groups with eight people and then that's even more chance for the business community to be involved as part of the solution of these types of issues. So you already have four people lined up, though? Oh, no, no, until we're funded, we haven't committed to anyone yet. We have someone in mind, but we haven't committed to. Once we get the green light, then the process kicks in. We have some... Got you. So what would be the measure of success that the pilot was successful? How would you... I think we talked about that and we're saying in the 50% to 60% range of participant evolving into a full-time position at a meaningful work site, a job, business, industry, city, whatever. Anything north of there we think is a good result. I think we changed one life. Yeah. I think there's statistics to say, if somebody can make it in a new job for 60 days, the likelihood of success moving forward is pretty strong. So it makes me very... How do you... I guess I'm... My question is getting there by nine o'clock. How do you... Do you have any counseling or communication pathways lined up to really go that extra mile to make sure these talented workforce folks make it to the training every day? The first little hiccup, the first time they miss, might send them on a spiral where they can't finish the process. So I guess the ultimate goal was make it that 60, 90 days. Right. And then transition into a municipality job, a county job where there's wonderful workforce demand. So the question is, do we have a process for... Are you going to go above and beyond to make sure the eight candidates come see you every day? Yeah. First thing we're going to offer, we're on our bus passes. We're going to try to get bus pass, so they have transportation. Depending on what the special need is, I'm not sure if we'd be able to utilize the van to go pick up, but we're a part of them. We're going to make things as easy as we possibly can for them to succeed. So hopefully they'll be utilized to bus this and get there. We're going to transfer them from the church, they get to our church, to the site each morning. We talked about if they're late, what do we do, how long do we wait for them, those kinds of things. But we're going to kind of work through all that as we go. We've thought about it and we have some backup plans that kind of help them along the way. And I think especially some sort of counseling layer. Oh yeah. That would be daily. Yeah. That's part of that soft skills. You know, kind of knowing where their direction is going, I think it's very important. I hope you work that into your... Yeah. That's part of our work ethics and program that we're going to be sharing with them doing those soft skills. So are there eight candidates from the local zip code as a target? Where will you do your recruiting for the program? We'll start with the Book of Rights community, but we span it out. We have a relationship with the olive of gospel where they come from all over. So we have a network where we're going to try to recruit these participants. Yeah. Fantastic. And whenever the presentations ever, I'd love to hear from Robert Anderson about the vacancies right now and public works, maybe Clint can speak to what we're looking at at Columbia Water for these types of positions, which would just make us feel like we're going to get this great pipeline of talent. The natural candidate. Well, I think every municipality is struggling to find great workforce. And it sounds like y'all have tailored this as a pipeline for us to fill that. So I'd cue those to the mayor for that. But yeah, just would love to hear about our vacancies right now. Yeah. But yeah, and we, you know, you know, in my previous life when I was down, I mentioned I was crap food, but I was down at SC state. And I was in the, you know, fund raising part of the business, but I had a relationship with every major corporation in South Carolina at that time. That was 10, 15 years ago. I don't have too much relation with corporate, but I have that kind of relationship building with industry. So I look for the opportunity to get out and talk to some of these businesses locally about hiring some of these, some of these participants. Good. I think that's a, I mean, I really, I really think this could be a neat program because it really is tailored to the individual and, and, and, you know, you, you said if you can change one life, but it's even better if we can change eight lives. Absolutely. So, are there any other questions? All right. Thank you, Mr. Epps. Thank you. Thank you. So thank you, Mr. Epps. Thank you for your presentation. I do want to point out that during our discussions with the church and the pathways to employment that there was a lot of talk about the signing of a, of a rules of conduct, I believe it was Mr. Epps that, you know, and I think that helps out with your question, Councilman, is, you know, this is what we expect and that's what the church expects. This is what the employer expects. So when we look at it from a vacancy standpoint, I think we look at it, not only speak for Columbia Water, but I think we all have rolling turnover, you know, where Samantha said she has five today. She may have 10 tomorrow. She may have two tomorrow too. So we may hire three people, but we continually have rolling vacancies, not only in public works, but throughout the city. I see her work at Job Fair. She puts it on well. She does great work. So, but I'm also seeing the, the, the other side of this where we have people that come in that have been on drugs for many years that come and do something different. So I also want to say that when we talk about our partnership, I don't know that we're training only for the city of Columbia. We've talked a lot about this with the church is we're training for Richland County, Lexington County, where we're training for Forest Acres, City of Casey, West Columbia, but we're also training for our vendors ourselves. You know, we have mowing contractors. We have cleaning contractors. You start a cleaning company right now. It's probably gold, you know, to get these people to do that. So it's not only just to teach them how to pick up litter, but it's it's teaching them, you know, how to plant a tree or, you know, how to dead head of flower or making sure that, you know, something looks better or, you know, how to wax a floor, maybe, or just teaching them the soft skills of life so they have a better opportunity to go out and do this. So I don't think there's a need in public works. I think there's a need to City of Columbia through Parks and Recreation, Public Works, Columbia Water, but I think there's a need through the contractor side too. And it's hopefully getting these people out to understand some of a couple of things we're working on, you know, CDL drivers are always, always, always a must. We're working on a partnership right now. We haven't even talked to the church about this. Through Midlands Tech. Midlands Tech did a machine which run cat, which we found out yesterday is actually has multimillion dollar machines that is teaching people how to operate trackers and motor graders and stuff. And we're going to bring those trainers soon to a conference we're having here in Columbia, but we've actually met with Midlands Tech about, you know, going out there, maybe sponsoring somebody to learn these, you know, all of our operators are sitting out here on 126. We need a few more operators. So I think there's a lot of opportunities for us to bring these people in and train them and hopefully teach them a better way. Well, and that's great information. And our previous work sessions about recruiting and retention, I think it's important for people to realize what a great future they could have as an employee with the city of Columbia. And that's really showing them if you retire in whatever 20, 30 years, here are the benefits. I think that needs to be played up in the off days when you're doing, you know, I'm not sure what programs, but just for them to really feel good about their path forward, I think it's very important. And that's something that our HR team can probably help out with showing the benefits of sticking it out. I think that brings us to a conversation we was having just before he walked in that, you know, I started when I was 25, I think Brian said he started when he was 26. I think Samantha started when she was 25, you know, they're looking at retirement and where it fits into their life, you know, now that they're fifties or so, I think. But a lot of people have that, but they're actually looking at their road to retirement, too. And I think when I came here, that's what the city sold itself on was a solid job in retirement. And, you know, as we get into tougher times with the economy and you hear of layoffs, you know, I preach all the time. I've always got to check with the city of Columbia forever. So, you know, and always got that through hard times. So I think I think what's really good about this program is the collaboration between the community, we want the business community, the city, and I think I think that's really what this council has been all about is collaboration and working together for solutions, solutions to the issues that we've had in the city. And I think this is just such a great time to be doing something like this. So my question is going to be, we have a three month pilot program. So would you like to present maybe halfway into the program, like in a 45 day mark, or, you know, to kind of give us an update? Yeah. And then we can talk about it at the 90 day. I think it'd be good to hear about it, you know, in the middle before, you know, just to see how things are going and to kind of see where we're leading and where this is going to head. So I will tell the committee currently we do have the funding for the pilot program. We've actually added money to our budget for the full program next year. I do think there's a couple issues that we need to work out with, maybe legal or something else, you know, maybe like a resolution or an ordinance or some kind of memorandum of understanding and we still got to work out a vehicle issue that, you know, how can we, can we sell a city vehicle for a dollar and get it back for a dollar? But, you know, we sell vehicles at Red Fleet all the time. So it may be something easy. It may not be. That sounded, that sounded too easy. Oh, it's got to be that easy. So, but so there, but once we get the council's blessing, then, you know, our committee moved this forward. And I want to thank Peyton for taking the lead on this and ACM Benjamin for setting in on the meetings and making sure this moves forward. Thank you all for, for getting us to where we are. I think this is an important thing. That's why I want to get a midpoint update because I think it's something that could, could go city wide, you know, perhaps and you can really make a difference with multiple different groups doing this. So you're saying, so to Robert, you have the three months currently budgeted and the current budget or on the next fiscal go round? Well, so we have the funding for the three months. We've actually requested the additional funding for next year in our budget. And this doesn't have to wait for funding to be set in place. This can start pretty, pretty quick. Yes. We have to get approval though. That's correct. All of the council. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. To extend those funds. Yeah. We'll get a contract. It'll come. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, to that point, I think we could start this fiscal year and then if y'all approve the the full year's funding and the budget request, continue on, you know, subsequent to the progress update and the project going well, which we all think it will. So. And then when's fiscal year start? So I do a lot first. A lot first. Yeah. So we would have to go ahead and put the line item for the full year in. Approved. Approved that in May, June. So pretty much kind of, we would need a kind of a halfway, month and a half update. Yeah. All right. And what we would do after today, even though it hasn't been a full council, is probably start working with legal and the church on a memorandum or something so we could, you know, hopefully just start it as a pilot program and move forward. Even if you started, you know, mid-April, what'd you guys go on? Are you really happy to see you? That was pretty cool. So, but we would start working on some of the. We're taking an agreement. I don't know how we're going to do the vehicle. So this will take a while to get on the agenda. So we could do a month out before. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing because our next meeting. So wouldn't it just be worth to do it early April? Just do the new fiscal year? Yeah, fine. Yeah, look, I mean, I can't. That gives me no time to. I mean, I'm in no hurry. I'm in no hurry to kick this thing off if it's not ready to be kicked off. But as it does get kicked off, I think it's important for us to to stay in touch with how it's going until we can release a fleet vehicle, the dollar purchase or whatever monetary amount purchase. My thought was, is when you, if you sell the vehicle for a dollar, you've transferred the whole ownership of the vehicle and the liability that goes with that vehicle. Therefore, they're carrying the liability insurance and carrying of that. If we actually lease them a vehicle, we may still have some liabilities. And that was my early thoughts on this. Is it easier to give a vehicle than to sell a vehicle? It's just, you can't just sell something purchased with public funds. We have, there's a process you have to go through. Is it easier to give it away or harder? No, there's, it's just, it's been done. Let's just share it. And we currently, I will, I will tell the committee that, and you may hear about this, we actually worked on this program, a similar program to this about three years ago, four years ago. And so we have some draft resolutions, some draft stuff already prepared that we can move forward as we go. So not so many, who would actually drive the van, the bus to the, an employee or somebody under. We would hire a supervisor, a supervisor and a driver. Okay. Okay. So no city employee would be. We'd provide the work. Any more questions? Ms. Benjamin Payton, am I missing anything? We're good. I think Councilman Brown hit on the, just the big thing. So we'll, we're going to move this along, but we're also, you got, you got, you've got cleanup to do along the way before it can come to full council. So we would expect it to come to full council before July 1st. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. All right. Thank you, Mr. Epps. That was a good presentation. Appreciate you. All right. Anything else at this time? Motion to adjourn. All right. Motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor, please say. All right. Thanks everybody.