Florida Crown Workforce Board -- To good to leave
Published March 12, 2009
OP-ED CONTRIBUTER
Jessica Catherwood Natale
The County Commission has decided to withdraw
Columbia County from the interlocal agreement with
Florida Crown Workforce Board (FCWB) in favor of joining
with Region 9 Alachua/Bradford.
This is really perplexing considering their excellent
record of performance.
Over the past decade FCWB has consistently
demonstrated outstanding performance, earning Region 7
incentive funding on numerous occasions.
There are no good reasons to join Alachua. Their
performance has been and continues to be mediocre,
evidenced by the fact they earned no incentive funding
at all last year. Incentive funding is the extra dollars
a region may be awarded based on excellent performance
and is used to provide additional workforce services to
a region’s job seekers.
Out of twenty-four regions, FCWB, representing
Columbia, Gilchrest, Union and, Baker Counties was only
one of two regions to meet all required threshold
indicators and was ranked fourth out of twenty-four in
ranking of services to employers. Region 9 ranked near
the bottom at twenty-one. Region 9 also failed to meet
its critical threshold requirement in welfare-recipient
participation and ranked twenty-third, almost at the
very bottom in services to job seekers. Additionally,
FCWB out-performed Region 9 in the rate which jobseekers
and veterans obtained employment after receiving
workforce services.
I am a former voting member of two Florida Regional
Workforce Boards and a management-level workforce
professional with a decade of experience in the field. I
cannot imagine why rational-thinking public servants
would support such a risky endeavor at a time of
economic uncertainty, especially when capable workforce
services are so critical to Columbia County residents.
I am a taxpaying Columbia County property owner with
a vested interest the area’s economic welfare. I believe
when elected officials make decisions that seem to defy
the sensibilities of the public, their motives usually
are political.
Whatever the County Commission’s motives for
considering this ill-conceived motion, they should
proceed cautiously and carefully, considering whether
they, along with the processes they’ve undertaken will
stand up to the state-level scrutiny this will
inevitably attract.
Ms. Natale is a former Chairman of the
Columbia County Charter
Review Commission 2005 -- ed
