LOCAL JOBS TARGETED BY NEW PARTNERSHIP

LOCAL JOBS FOR RESIDENTS TARGETED BY NEW CITY PARTNERSHIP WITH

WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT AGENCY

City of Somerville seeks to partner with an agency that
will connect local workers first with local jobs, serving as first contact for
employers looking to hire local residents

SOMERVILLE
– With an anticipated influx of new job opportunities in Somerville, the City
aims to cut a path leading local workers directly to those jobs by entering into
a contract with a local workforce development agency. In addition to providing
job training, the selected agency will connect residents with Somerville
employers looking to hire and will promote all opportunities for residents to
have first access to local jobs.

Although
Somerville’s unemployment rate is consistently 1 to 2 percent lower than the
state unemployment rate, most residents work outside the city, with 45,000
workers living in the city today but only 20,000 jobs located within the city. But
that tide is beginning to turn. With the coming arrival of the Green Line
Extension, a wave of commercial development underway in Assembly Square and the
future commercial expansion of Union Square, Somerville is moving toward the community’s
goal of creating 30,000 new jobs in the city by 2030, as set forth in the
20-year comprehensive SomerVision plan. Beyond creating new jobs, existing commercial
development has already paid great dividends in the form of a lower tax rate in
fiscal year 2014 and an unprecedented shift in the tax burden from residential
to commercial property owners.

Still,
only 16 percent of Somerville residents work in the city today. The City is
adopting a strategy to ensure that Somerville residents can take advantage of
the new employment opportunities created by city’s growth, allowing them to
work near where they live, reduce their commuting costs and spend more time
with their families.

That strategy starts with the City inviting proposals from
agencies—public, private or nonprofit—that can create and maintain a database
of both interested job applicants and Somerville job opportunities, serve as
the primary point of contact for employers looking to hire local residents,
host job fairs and advertise through social and print media local job
opportunities as they arise. These steps will help Somerville residents gain first
access to new employment opportunities in the City, bypassing the sometimes
confusing, difficult to access and hard to navigate regional workforce
development system, a problem identified by the Somerville Jobs Advisory
Committee established by Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone.

The agency must also prepare residents for new jobs coming
to Somerville by providing workforce development training that equips
Somerville residents with the skills they need to take advantage of these new
opportunities. Somerville businesses will also be empowered to find qualified
employees with roots in the community, as the agency will serve as the primary
contact for Somerville employers looking to hire locally.

“Our core value is making Somerville an exceptional place to
live, work, play and raise a family, and making that a reality for all our
residents begins with ‘work’—having a decent job makes living here, playing
here and raising a family all possible,” said Mayor Curtatone. “We need to give
local workers every advantage that we can, so that as Somerville grows, so do
our residents in the workforce. We started with the Jobs Advisory Committee
that identified the barriers our residents face in finding employment near
their homes, and this proposed partnership directly addresses the
recommendations made by that committee. Local jobs for local residents mean a
better quality of life for our residents, saving time and money, and improving
personal health and public health, and bringing new employers to the City diminishes
the tax burden on residents while increasing the resources needed to maintain
and improve city services.”

The agency will agree to a performance-based two-year
contract worth a maximum of $100,000, according to the request for proposals
(RFP) that the City released this week, with a maximum of $50,000 paid to the
agency each year. The City will hold the agency accountable for its performance
by agreeing on proposed benchmarks—including number of residents served,
successful job placements, workforce training sessions offered and frequency of
public outreach—and a schedule for meeting those benchmarks. In the first year
of the contract, 20 percent of the funds will be linked to meeting those
benchmarks, rising to 50 percent and in the second year of the contract.