Item #34

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Steve Adler
Posts: 533
Joined: Fri Jan 16, 2015 2:12 pm

Item #34

Post by Steve Adler »

Council Members,

Linked below for your consideration are amendments to agenda item #34 related to the City’s Economic Incentive Policy. These amendments are intended to address issues raised during discussion of this resolution at last week’s council worksession, as well as subsequent suggestions from the co-sponsors of this item (CMs Flannigan, Houston, and Troxclair). Similar changes have been made to the section on Economic Incentives in Item # 32, and this item will be handled separately only if Item #32 is not passed by Council, as it is included therein.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-Vu3 ... 2NSVkVpMDg

Several of you have asked about the Community Workforce Master Plan, which is referenced in the resolution. As part of our roles as Chief Elected Officials of Austin and Travis County, Judge Eckhardt and I commissioned Workforce Solutions, our county’s workforce development agency, to initiate the plan in February of 2016, which is now in the final stages of development.

Workforce Solutions has convened stakeholders from our local workforce development ecosystem to collaborate on the development of a shared goals and metrics for aligning our policies and investments to move the needle on poverty and income inequality. The result thus far has been the identification of the community goal of moving 10,000 of our neighbors who are living at or below 200% of the federal poverty level into middle skill jobs in the next 5 years.

We can only accomplish this bold goal by using every tool at our disposal, which could include revising our economic development policy to incentivize the creation of middle skill jobs along with the appropriate training, paid internships and apprenticeships necessary to develop home-grown talent to fill these jobs in the areas of Austin where these jobs are particularly needed.

Earlier this week, the Travis County Commissioners Court received a briefing on the Community Workforce Master Plan, and I encourage you to watch the video here: http://traviscountytx.iqm2.com/Citizens ... ingID=1703

Here is a link to the presentation: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-Vu3 ... 1UzYklzcTA
Mayor