By Joseph A. Curtatone

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

The people of Somerville embody hard-working persistence. That is as true today as it was when I was growing up on Prospect Hill, among immigrants from around the world who came to our shores seeking a better life for their families, and opportunity. The difference today is that we have a shared set of hopes and dreams, codified in our comprehensive plan, SomerVision. That plan, created after two years of intensive community input, plan asks not what we want to build, but who we want to be. We want to be a vibrant, diverse, regional employment center that’s walkable, bikeable, and transit-accessible. In short: we want to create more opportunity for our residents, but it’s not just enough to bring more jobs to Somerville. We have to help our residents so they can advantage of these new opportunities. That’s why last week I, state Rep. Christine Barber, and Meridith Levy of the Somerville Community Corporation spoke before the state Legislature on our home rule petition to create a new Somerville Municipal Job Creation and Retention Trust.

The Board of Aldermen voted on April 9 to approve the home rule petition to establish a job creation and retention trust and a corresponding linkage program. Like our Affordable Housing Trust Fund, a board of trustees would oversee the jobs trust. We’re pursuing this idea because as our community grows, we want our residents to benefit. The community set ambitious goals for us to reach in SomerVision. Among them is the creation of 30,000 new jobs in the city by 2030. We want to expand our commercial tax base to create a sustainable, resilient economy that creates a daytime population and supports independent local businesses.

We also want to create opportunity like the kind that has drawn people to Somerville over the decades. In the first half of the 20th century, Somerville was an industrial employment center for the region. Today, the vast majority of our residents have to leave the city to find work. Local jobs mean less time on a costly commute and more time with family for our residents. It means the opportunity to walk or bike to work, money saved, and improved personal health and overall public health as we take cars off the road and emissions out of the air.

We have to connect our residents with the jobs that will be created, and prepare them for these new opportunities. So we undertook a nexus study of our existing affordable housing linkage program, and of a potential jobs linkage program, evaluating the impact of the growth we are aiming for in SomerVision. The results of that study are clear: Our existing labor force cannot adequately fill the demand for workers that will be created as our commercial base grows. While many of the new jobs created will match up with our current workforce, the large demand for office and computer skills and for health support—such as health care technicians, nursing aides, physical therapy assistants and office positions—will likely result in many positions going to non-Somerville residents, the study found. Many of the jobs that will be in high demand are also good sources of entry-level jobs, the study pointed out, that can help our low- and moderate-income residents get started on a career.

Much of our less educated workforce faces existing barriers to benefitting from these jobs, the study also concluded, due to language, reading or math skills, or limited previous work experience. And current workforce development services do not adequately address these barriers. The primary federal workforce program, the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), delivers funding to individuals via vouchers, preventing programs from targeting specific development projects and employers. Even then, the demand for WIA vouchers is much greater than the supply. While Somerville Public Schools’ SCALE program and the Somerville Community Corporation do tremendous work in connecting our residents to career services, there are gaps in ESL programs and job readiness and placement programs.

By creating a Job Creation and Retention Linkage program, we will be able to fund the services that can address the barriers our residents face to the new job opportunities that are coming. We will be able to fund and connect our residents to job training and development services, building their skill sets and helping them fill the demand that will be created as new businesses open here. And we know in Somerville that all the issues we face—the economy, education, public safety—are connected. If our residents work closer to home, they can spend more time with their kids. Their kids can do better in school. People make better decisions and crime goes down. And our economy improves.

The people of Somerville embody hard-working persistence. So as they work to help themselves, their families and our community, we should act to help them. The creation of this new Job Creation and Retention Trust is one important piece of that puzzle.