Worker plan still forming as voting nears

San Antonians will begin casting votes in person Tuesday on Mayor Ron Nirenberg’s $154 million plan to put those who lost their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic back to work — but details about how the money will be spent aren’t fully known.

Nirenberg wants to use a 1⁄8- cent sales tax to help 40,000 residents get training for higher-paying jobs or college degrees over four years starting in September 2021.

A soon-to-be-released study by economist Steve Nivin found that the San Antonio economy will see $85 in spending for every dollar spent on the program, the mayor said Friday.

“We have developed a programwith tried and tested institutions and leaders matched to the industries in a way that allows us to meet the needs of both workers and industry,” Nirenberg said.

In the three months since Nirenberg embarked on the push, city officials have figured out some markers, such as who would benefit from the program; how many participants they expect to stick it out and complete their training or degree; and what industries would employ those graduates.

How the proposed program will reach those goals — the policies that guide the program and how it will be implemented — won’t be solidified until after the election, if the measure passes.

Officials in the city’s economic development department, for instance, are working on an oversight structure for the program.

City officials likelywill build upon the existing $75 million workforce training program created by the City Council over the summer as part of a $191 million recovery package intended to blunt economic damage caused by the pandemic.

That program is supposed to help 10,000 residents get jobs in industries such as construction, health care and advanced manufacturing by September — when the sales tax would kick in.

The effort got off to a rocky start when it launched in August.

Jobless San Antonians faced glitches and dropped telephone calls when they tried to contact Workforce Solutions Alamo, one of the providers involved in the program. The agency had to hire more staff and make technical improvements to deal with the high call volume.

“We have an opportunity to learn from it,” District 4 Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia said. “I think that that’s the beauty of treating that almost like a pilot program. We’re going to be able to see what people are doing, what people are interested in, how we target folks that actually need it.”

But the uncertainty has left an opening for a small cadre of vocal opponents — including former mayoral challenger Greg Brockhouse — to blast the idea as halfbaked and rushed.

The money, opponents say, instead should go toward immediate financial relief for residents struggling to stay in their homes and small businesses fighting to keep

their doors open, rather than something that will take years to see the full benefit.

Shooting down the proposal wouldmeana tax cut for San Antonio consumers, Brockhouse said.

“This is not pandemic relief and anybodywho says so… that’s not a fair argument,” he said.

Nirenberg said he agrees the city needs more small business relief on top of the $33 million set aside in the summer recovery package.

But he and the plan’s other backers say the city can’t afford not tomake the investment touted by the proposition on the Nov. 3 ballot.

Since the pandemic began, more than 140,000 residents have sought unemployment benefits, a significant percentage of whom were in low-wage jobs in restaurants, retail andtourismbefore the pandemic hit.

“Failure to address the crisis with a robust effort toward economic recovery, focusedon investing in people, will be far more expensive than the eighth of a penny thatmight come back if all of these programs fail,” Nirenberg said.

Economists have warned of a “K-shaped” recovery — meaning the wealthy will easily bounce back from the economic crisis while lower- to middle-income households will continue to struggle.

That K-shaped recovery likely is to fall hard on the city’s neediest households, already pummeled by the pandemic, Rocha Garcia said. Some 20 percent of the jobs lost in leisure and hospitality aren’t expected to come back within the next five years, per a June analysis from Nivin and Jon

Hockenyos, another economist.

“Not only are they already suffering disproportionately, they’re going to suffer in the recovery stage if we don’t train them up,” Rocha Garcia said.

The program would target those with high school diplomas or withsomecollege credits butno degree, who make less than $21,000 a year, officials have said.

Roughly 34,000 residents who sought unemployment since the pandemic hit in March had some college credit but no degree, according to a memo from the city’s economic development department detailing the proposal. Thus, it would be cheaper to help those people complete degrees and seek higher-paying jobs, officials posit.

The goal is to see at least 80 percent of the program’s participants get placed in higher-paying jobs — and 90 percent earn higher pay than they did before they received training or earned degrees.

The idea is that the programwill be flexible depending on the needs of the job market, in part relying on projections from the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation, Nirenberg said.

But not allwho enrollwill be expected to finish. Officials want at least 80 percent of the program’s participants to complete training or degrees.

That completion rate is higher than what certificate training programs usually deliver, said Heath Prince, director of the Ray Marshall Center for the Study for HumanResources at theUniversity of Texas at Austin.

Typically, workforce training programs see completion rates in the ballpark of 50 percent, Prince said, though he noted local program

Project Quest as an exception. That program boasts an 89 percent completion rate, its website states.

“That’s on really the outer bounds of what I’ve seen as possible,” Prince said.

That rate also is higher than the most recent graduation rates at San Antonio’s public higher education institutions. Alamo Colleges’ three-year graduation rate was less than 30 percent in fall 2018.

That year, the six-year graduation rate for students who entered as freshmen at the University of Texas at San Antoniowas 50.8 percent.

At Texas A&M University-San Antonio, which received its first freshmanclass in 2016, the graduation rate for two-year transfers in 2018 was 60 percent.

Nirenberg expects to reach those goals because of additional assistance embedded in the plan that extends beyond just the cost of enrollment. Participants would be eligible for $1,000 worth of “wraparound services” like case management, academic remediation and job placement — and could tap another $500 inemergency financial assistance.

The idea is to “anticipate obstacles that become reasonswhy people are not able to complete” training or course work like seeking child care or missing a car payment “and eliminate those before they’re encountered,” Nirenberg said.

“I expect to beat those rates,” Nirenberg said.

On average, the programwould provide $2,000 in tuition assistance for those in training programs and $3,000 for those seeking degrees.

That seemingly low cost has raised the eyebrows of some of the proposal’s critics — given the high cost of attending even community college and how much it takes to put someone through Project Quest: a little over $10,000.

“We’re talking about changing issues of generational poverty with $3,850 (per person),” District 1 Councilman Roberto Treviño said. “That is the biggest bargain I’ve ever seen inmy life. You know what they say about something that’s too good to be true.”

But the proposed program isn’t meant to cover the entire cost of someone’s training or college education, Rocha Garcia said. Those who enroll likelywill be eligible for scholarships, grants and other financial help to pay the total cost, she noted, and the sales taxwill be on top of funds that organizations that partner with the city already receive.

“This is ourway of pitching in,” Rocha Garcia said. “But others are going to pitch in as well.”

Tothe chagrin ofopponents like District 10 Councilman Clayton Perry, the proposal doesn’t include ways for the city to recoup its money should people drop out ormove to another city upon completing the program.

To Prince at the Ray Marshall Center, it’s almost impossible to squander money onworkforce development given decades of falling federal support for training programs.

“It’s rare that thatmoney is ever wasted,” Prince said. “The money’s always needed. It’s never enough. But the alternative is to disinvest or to continue to underinvest. And that alternative is worse.”