January 09, 2024 Minutes

Workforce Development Board Minutes

Employment Services - 315 N. 11th Ave, Bldg. B, Greeley, CO 80631
Meeting Location: First Floor Conference Room
Meeting: January 09, 2024 - 12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.

Board Members Present:
Alex Kloehn, Lutheran Family Services, Rocky Mountains; Amanda Ericson, HRx Services; Bill Johnson, Yoder Family Companies;; Cecil Courtney, Denver Pipefitters Local 208;; David Zumbrun, Chicken Salad Chick; Elizabeth Barber, The Greeley Dream Team;; Justin Booker, City of Greeley Fire Department and IAFF Professional Firefighter's Union, Local 888 - Greeley Firefighters;; Lisa Taylor, The Weld Trust; Lisa Vaughn, Golden Aluminum Lori Cuno, Community Educational Outreach; Matthew Hortt, High Plains Library District; Michael Wailes, Weld RE-5J; Nick Spezza, Aims Community College; Phil MacHendrie, City of Greeley; Rich Werner, Upstate Colorado; Robert Rigg, Elder Construction; Scott James, Weld County Board of County Commissioners; Shawn Croissant, Envision; Victoria Cordova, Banner Health.

Quorum Present: Yes

Others Present:
Andrew Chadwick, ESWC CeCe Majchrowski, ESWC Greg Cordova, ESWC Karina Amaya-Ragland, ESWC Ruth DeBoer, ESWC Tami Grant, Weld County DHS Jesus Borrego, CDLE Thomas Hartman, CWDC 

  1. Call to Order: 12:01 pm
    1. Introductions
    2. Chair and Chair Elect
      1. Chair: Transition from Bill Johnson to Matt Hortt, who was selected in November.
      2. Chair Elect: Seeking nominations. Interested parties should contact Ruth, CeCe, or Karina.
  2. Changes to the Agenda: Yes, Thomas Hartman is here from CWDC to present us with our High Performing Board Certificate, we’ve added him to the Announcements, Updates and Celebrations section of the agenda.
  3. Approval of Minutes - Motion to approve by Bill Johnson, seconded by Robert Rigg.
  4. Unfinished Business
    1. PY22 Annual Monitoring Response – Karina Amaya Ragland 
      1. ESWC’s responses were due Feb 26th. Findings: 5, Recommendations: 1.
      2. ESWC is addressing these through process creation, staff training and file review adjustments.
    2. Announcements, Updates, and Celebrations
      1. CWDC presented the WCWDB with our High Performing Board Certificate. This was presented to Matt Hortt
      2. Joe Barela wrote a letter to go with our Certificate, thanking Weld County’s Local Board.
    3. Awareness Committee – Andrew Chadwick
      1. At our last meeting we discussed that the committee was going to start a newsletter. We got a template from the office of PIO. Ruth and I are going to meet later this week to fill it with content. We will be starting with just sending it to the board members, please share with other people and let them know to subscribe.
      2. Elizabeth Barber inquired about distribution to local businesses; Andrew advised that to comply with policy we can only encourage people to share to gain subscriptions.
    4. Youth Committee – Lisa Taylor, Elizabeth Barber, Andy Yost & Greg Cordova
      1. Andy Yost discussed the importance of apprenticeships and alternative learning methods.
      2. CareerWise was at the last Youth Committee to talk about their apprenticeship program and brought a young man that was able to approach learning through an apprenticeship because traditional learning didn’t work for him; it is so important for us to remember that alternative learning is important.
      3. Justin Booker recommended that we ask this young man to write up a summary of his experience that we could put in a Newsletter – Either the WBL one or the Awareness Committee one.
      4. Young Adult Job Fair will take place March 27th at the Island Grove Event Center. ESWC is partnering with High Plains Library District again, as they are a fabulous partner for this event. Headshots and interview clothes will be available again as those were big highlights last year. More info to come.
      5. Lisa Taylor stated that if there is issue getting kids to the event, please reach out to the Weld Trust and we’ll see if we can brainstorm some solutions.
    5. Aims News
      1. In December the Aims Board of Trustees approved a 45,000 sqft building to be a hub to develop a workforce innovation network where people could get trained on starting sustainable businesses. Please share your ideas on how you think we can make this work; we want to utilize our partners.
    6. VSO
      1. When they were in the building with the clerk and recording, they were seeing about 30-34 clients per month. Since moving here, they have seen 108 per month, that is walk-ins and appointments. Glenn from the state came down and gave an official training. ESWC will be looking to start a Veteran’s committee by 2025 that will be umbrellaed under the Workforce Development Board. Our County Roots Newsletter is conducting interviews on Tim and Tom today and will highlight the VSO in the upcoming newsletter.
  5. Board Focus
    1. Joint Workforce Development Board Meeting
      1. You have received an invite for 2/14/24 to attend our joint meeting with Larimer. We’ll go over with a high-level focus of the state plan and the 4 areas of focus. We will then break out into tables where we will have each table break out into sessions and discuss one of the four focuses. Our hope is to take information from these breakout sessions to build our local/strategic plans. Those are due in May and require a 30-day comment period. We plan to have ours done by March 31st, publishing April 1st for that comment period, and then deal with any changes that will need to be made afterwards.
    2. NoCo Works
      1. The Steering Committee selected the Community Foundation to hold the funds, apply for grants etc. that will be utilized toward NoCo Works projects. They support both Weld and Larimer Counties in various ways. We wanted to find a company that didn’t serve only one county and this company fit that role.
      2. It’s important that our subcommittees get interconnected, so they know what each other are doing.
      3. Amanda is joining the steering committee from Larimer County. She is their WDB liaison. She’ll be able to take notes, create documents, and really be a wonderful support to us.
      4. The steering committee will be working on keeping something of a dashboard going forward and will update it as necessary and be able to present it to boards, or for grants etc.
      5. Sub-committees are still taking volunteers. Please consider joining one if you feel you have the capacity to take that on, it’s about an hour per quarter. Any time you put into these committees also helps us qualify for our High Performing Board Certification.
  6. Miscellaneous
    1. Draft PY23 Q2 Dashboard
      1. Because we are a month behind this dashboard is only a draft, because our FY money was approved in October, but it hasn’t come through, yet we aren’t seeing that on the dashboard yet. So, when you see most of our adult funds already used, don’t worry the FY funds haven’t been added yet.
      2. Funding is a concern this year, not with just funds for our clients but with our staff as well. Covid did throw everyone off with a lot of temporary funding.
      3. Tami Grant informed the board that the Governors budget proposal would allow us to have the DPN position fully funded through the state if approved.
  7. Action Items – Motion to Approve to 15 completed Policy revisions/updates – Lisa, Shawn
    1. Approve All Policies – There are a total of 15 policies that were uploaded to the Google drive and shared with you last week that we are asking for approval of today.
    2. CeCe has another chunk to complete by Jan 31st. Once those are complete, we’ll upload them to the Google drive for your review and Ruth will send out a virtual voting option.
  8. Adjournment – 1:32 pm

Strategic Goals

Continue seeking clarity and improving connections for programs and services between Employment Services and the businesses and individuals in the Weld County Community.

Increase awareness and clarify the impact of Weld County's workforce network by attracting organizations and businesses to utilize the available funding provided to Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) targeted populations.

Increase Weld County Workforce Development Board (WCWDB) member engagement by involving board members in planning, leadership pipeline development, and committee involvement.

Working with intention by participating and supporting ESWC, sector partnerships, and their workgroups to ensure our regional workforce has equitable access to opportunities for quality, life-long education, and individual advancement to secure the future of work in Northern Colorado.

Board Recruitment

The following positions are vacant:

One Business Representative from any of the below industries –

  • Other Services (except Public Administration)
  • Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting
  • Administrative and Support and Waste Management and Remediation Services
  • Transportation and Warehousing

If you know someone interested in workforce initiatives and can fill one of these roles, please direct that person to Andrew Chadwick or CeCe Majchrowski.

Upcoming Events

Special Event - Regional Meeting: 2/14/2024; 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM (Breakfast 7:45 AM)
Required Meeting: 3/12/2024; 11:45 AM to 1:30 PM (12:00 PM-1:30 PM Virtual)
Awareness Committee Meeting: 2/13/2024; 11:45 AM to 1:00 PM (12:00 PM-1:00 PM Virtual)
Youth Committee Meeting: 2/27/2024; 11:45 AM to 1:30 PM (12:00 PM-1:30 PM Virtual)

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