PORT ANGELES — The Economic Development Administration is crossing its Ts and dotting its Is as it prepares to disperse $35 million to the North Olympic Peninsula.
The Recompete grant will fund six projects in Clallam and Jefferson counties. The core issue, Clallam County Commissioner Mike French told the Port Angeles Business Association on Tuesday morning, is the “prime age employment gap.”
Nationally, only about 80 to 85 percent of people at their prime age for employment — 25-54 years old — are actually in the workforce, French said.
On the North Olympic Peninsula, that number is closer to 71 percent, according to the Economic Development Administration (EDA). That discrepancy forms the prime age employment gap.
The Recompete projects that the North Olympic Peninsula Recompete Coalition (NOPRC) developed were designed to close that gap.
“This data set was the North Star of the Recompete program,” French said. “We wanted to be driven by the data. We wanted to make our decisions based on it.”
The six projects that the EDA opted to fund are the Olympic Peninsula Resource Hub ($9.8 million); Peninsula College training programs ($6.9 million); the Peninsula barging network ($6 million); purchase of a thermal modification unit ($1.2 million); tribal and underserved communities ($8.5 million); and coalition governance ($3.2 million).
Although two of NOPRC’s projects were not funded through Recompete, alternative funding sources are being sought, French said.
Those projects center around a few main goals. The first is to reduce barriers for individuals trying to enter the workforce. Other projects center around job creation and workforce development.
One focuses specifically on equity issues by channeling funding to five tribal nations and other underserved communities, French said.
At the end of the grant’s five-year timeline, French said he hopes the North Olympic Peninsula’s prime age employment gap will disappear and about 1,300 direct and indirect jobs will be created.
“In the modern world, every strong economy is supported by a strong workforce,” he said.
One of the biggest risks these projects face, French said, is finding willing participants and convincing them that “they have a bright future if they take a chance.”
Individuals also may be reticent to enter the workforce because of the benefit cliff, he said.
“People are really sophisticated about the benefits that they get,” he said. “They know how much money they can get before they lose that benefit, and they make sure not to do that.”
To overcome that barrier, French said the Recompete team needs to “show them it is about accessing a career where you can be blowing past that income level.”
To that end, Recompete projects are focusing on jobs that will pay a minimum of $26 an hour, with benefits, within two years.
“We’re not trying to train them for minimum wage jobs,” he said.
Each of the six project leads are individually contracting with the EDA for their funding. French said their paperwork should be wrapped up soon and then the fun part — the spending — will commence.
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Reporter Emma Maple can be reached by email at emma.maple@peninsuladailynews.com.
