Peoria Standard

Joint Commission on Racial Justice and Equity Economic Development and Jobs Subcommittee met May 13.

Here are the minutes provided by the subcommittee:

Attendance (in person): Melissa Bloom, Eric Burns, Claude White, Brittany Graves, Chris Setti, Peter Avery, Mike Seghetti, Uriah Kilgallin (via Zoom): Michelle DeVore, Janice Zagardo, Anu Gokhale, Mark Slover, Erik Christian

Absent: Jackie Watkins, Patresse Moore, Kimberly Richardson, Tom Pelger

1. Call to Order - The meeting was called to order at 4:33 pm by Eric Burns.

2. Approval of Minutes – The minutes of our April 8 meeting were approved by consensus.

3. Informational Items and Reports

• Minority Business support (Mike Seghetti report)

o Met with the MBDC’s Denise Moore to discuss how the Commission could help what they do. She supports the idea of an annual conference and provided ideas for its success.

o City of Peoria needs to be involved. Need a meeting with Kimberly Richardson and Melodi Green to discuss City role and funding, timing (late August or November?), business needs to be addressed, location (Civic Center?).

• Jobs - New Employee Travel Assistance program pilot (PETAP)

o Application status: 36 applications to date; will hold open until we reach 50. Finalizing things with the debit card bank to invite approved applicants to City Hall to sign their program agreement, get their debit card.

▪ Kimberly is working with Cara on follow up with those who have not applied to determine if we need more information sessions to reach our target of 50.

▪ Suggestion that we invite Jobs Partnership to attend our June 10 meeting.

o Scaling up Team: looking at future funding, program management and administration. Assembling white paper to document full project to ensure that this gets scaled up. We can leverage the Commission’s overall plan for communication, including the Commission website, press releases, social media, radio & TV

o Monitoring Team: The team looked at the application itself, looking at the jobs that they got, and tracking the jobs that they have at 6 months, 9 months, and at 12 months. Quantitative metrics will target economic / financial gains. One suggestion to gather qualitative gains might be to create a community and support group amongst the participants using social media (private Facebook group?), collecting stories and socializing. Tracking the impact on individuals and families is critical to future funding to scale this up.

• GPEDC Labor Shed study (Chris Setti)

o Reviewed spreadsheet of study’s potential action areas to identify where the RJE ED working group could potentially assist.

o June 5th, from 9-11am, consultants from Newmark are giving a presentation on their findings.

o Especially a note of a lack of Career Technical Education funding

• Steering Committee Update (Peter Avery)

o RJE website has undergone major updates.

o Working to package all the efforts of working group into easily digestible information

o Eric encouraged all to communicate the Commission’s work through their personal networks. Many in the community are still unaware of the Commission or its work.

4. Discussion

• Uriah will be gone at our June 10 meeting, so will work with Kimberly on who will run the Zoom, if needed.

5. Recommendations for the Steering Committee

6. New Business

• Next meeting: Monday, June 10, 2024, 4:30pm at Grace Baptist. 405 N Richard Pryor.

7. Adjournment - The meeting was adjourned at 5:31 pm.

https://www.peoriacounty.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_05132024-1602