Corridor Alliance

Regional Economic Developers Group (Seven County Region)

Anamosa Public Library

September 10, 2014

Present:

Abby Kisling

Jasmine Almoayed

Dusty Embree

Chad Heiman

Kim Becicka

Dennis Jordan

Ryan Murphy, Iowa Workforce Development

Organizational Updates:

Abby: David's Famous is ready to open soon, strategic planning sessions have been held, and she is working on an online economic development institute class

Jasmine: Has wrapped up the Angelou Economics study and strategic plan for the city

along with a Mainstream study, she is taking all the recommendations and combining in to a master list, might be working with the Buxton research company to create a thumbprint of communities and which retailers are a good match for them

Dusty: Anamosa worked with We Create Here to have a visioning event in their community, working with Connect Iowa, and also looking at doing HomeBase Iowa

Dennis: They are in the midst of a lot travel right now with trade shows, etc., have 38 active projects, working on their 2015 strategy, discussed the upcoming site selection guild tour scheduled for October and how he would like to have a Corridor Alliance event on the Friday morning of that visit

Chad: Legacy Mfg is expanding, working on Step 3 application for certified site, Nick Glew starts on Monday as George’s replacement; ramping up their HomeBase Iowa visits, and Director Durham visited Marion recently

Kim:Have completed our strategic plan for 2015 and some of the strategies are the regional workforce plan, assisting companies with apprenticeship programs(starting with IT sector), working on transportation/logistics certificateprogram and trying to get that to run, developing a new sales certificate, and developing training on Agile, we are piloting a Success Institute which is a bootcamp for small and medium-sized companies, and 260E training is going well

Regional Workforce Development Plan(handout attached to email)

Kim reviewed the presentation that is available if you want to present it to any of your boards. The Executive Summary discusses the plan and the steps that were done to create it; the goals and objectives document is the plan.

Each objective has an organizer responsible for making sure the team meets and develops their work. Then there are lead organizations that are the key implementers and primary coordinators for the objective. They also work with supporting organizations to identify and implement strategies.

Corridor Alliance has a part in the following objectives: 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1

There will be a Governance Team that will be formed and we will need a representative from the Corridor Alliance on that team. Also on that team will be the core team along with the lead supporting organization representative.

The next steps for the Corridor Allianceis to review the plan and decide if we support it. Then review the objectives that the Corridor Alliance has a part in and decide which of the objectives is most important for this group to be involved with.

Karen will send a survey for members to prioritize the objectives. We will then reconvene in a month to review the survey results and then based on those results, what ideas do you have to support the objectives?

LaborShed Studies(handout attached to email)

Ryan Murphy discussed and reviewed the LaborShed studies that Iowa Workforce Development is able to produce. He included examples of recent labor studies that they have done; included were both urban and rural studies. They are doing more studies by a regional area and can provide customized wages to fit the counties in our area.

He also discussed the new reports that they have created:

  • Comparison sheet done completed by combining previous LaborShed reports
  • Regional comparison done with regions throughout the state
  • Also compares our region to the state which is updated yearly
  • National Career Readiness Certificate - still tweaking this report butshows how many certificate holders are in our region and the certificate level achieved
  • Created a cheat sheet to help utilize their website

The studies take approximately 12 weeks to complete; everything he discussed is included in their price. A large county cost is $6225 and a medium county would cost $4200. In the past, utility companies and Kirkwood have contributed to the cost. The cost includes two years of service so if you have aprospect that needs specific occupation informationthey can provide that for you.

We can add 1-2 questions that are unique to our region; Kim suggested:

"If you have more than a HS degree, did you get your degree from a school in Iowa?"

"Were you born in Iowa?"

At our next meeting, we will need to decide if we are going to do a study.

Veterans and Employers in the Corridor Event(handout attached to email)

Kim discussed the Corridor Business Journal event on October 7 and November 18. She had emailed John Lohman that we have an interest in this area and are working on plans on how to be attractive to veterans and was wondering if there were any opportunities to speak about how we meet locally to address those needs.

Kim will meet with John Lohman to see if this would be a fit for us.

Site Selectors Guild Tour(handout attached to email)

Dennis distributed the draft agenda for this event that CRMEA and ICAD is coordinating. It is scheduled for Wednesday, October 8 – Friday, October 10. Dennis would like to have a roundtable discussion on October 10 from 9-11 am with Corridor Alliance members.

We would then schedule a special meeting of the Corridor Alliance group to meet after this roundtable event from 11:30 am-1 pm.

Code of Conduct(handout attached to email)

Dennis distributed the draft code of conduct. The purpose of the agreement is to make sure that we all know the rules of engagement. Please review the document and then we will discuss at our next meeting.