March 28, 2000

On March 21, 2000 the Milpitas City Council unanimously passed a motion to request that Milpitas be included in the North Valley (NOVA) Job Training Consortium for programs and services provided by the 1998 Workforce Investment Act. In this matter, the City of Sunnyvale has the authority to act on behalf of the NOVA consortium cities: Cupertino, Los Altos, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale. Final authority to designate the membership of the consortium rests with the Governor of California.

On March 22, 2000 the NOVA Private Industry Council held a public hearing to consider the pros and cons of including Milpitas in the consortium. Their unanimous recommendation to the City of Sunnyvale is to petition the Governor to include the City of Milpitas in the NOVA consortium as one of the State's Workforce Investment Areas.

Staff concurs with the recommendation of the NOVA Private Industry Council.

On December 14, 1999 and January 11, 2000, the Sunnyvale City Council reviewed the recommendations of the NOVA Private Industry Council and authorized staff to pursue designation as a Workforce Investment Area under the 1998 Workforce Investment Act (WIA) starting July 1, 2000. At that time there were two other applications to serve other areas of Santa Clara County: one by the City of San Jose to serve San Jose, and one by the County of Santa Clara to serve the areas of the county not included in San Jose or the NOVA Consortium. Based on the uncertainty of how these applications would progress, the Sunnyvale City Council on January 11, as part of their recommendations, stated that, if approached by other cities in the area, it would be willing to entertain expanding the boundaries of the consortium. This decision would be based on the cost/benefit of such expansion, the affect of boundary changes on the region, and obtaining concurrence from the Governor for such changes.

In December/January, the affected cities received communications from the Silicon Valley Private Industry Council and the County of Santa Clara that NOVA and the City of San Jose would be the two Workforce Investment Areas in the county, that the County was working with San Jose to make sure that all cities that had been served by the County would be eligible to be served by the City of San Jose, and that some cities may wish to consider the option of joining the NOVA Consortium.

In the end of February, the County of Santa Clara formally withdrew its application to be a Workforce Investment Area. Simultaneously, the City of San Jose requested from the Governor area designation for all the area formerly administered by the County of Santa Clara. Also in February, the city manager of Milpitas called NOVA to pursue the feasibility of requesting membership in the NOVA Consortium. On March 15, the City of Milpitas staff informed NOVA that they were going to recommend this action to their council, and the item was agendized for March 21. At that meeting the Milpitas City Council unanimously approved requesting membership in the consortium and notifying the Governor of its intent (Attachment I).

Given the interest of the City of Milpitas, the Mayor of Sunnyvale, acting on behalf of the consortium cities, formally requested that the Governor suspend NOVA's area designation request until the end of March (Attachment II). This timeframe enabled both the NOVA Private Industry Council and the Sunnyvale City Council to consider the request and, if necessary, amend the WIA Five-Year Plan to reflect any changes.

On March 22 the NOVA Private Industry council conducted a public hearing. Agendized items included approval of the WIA Five-Year Plan and developing a recommendation on the request from Milpitas. After considering the pros and cons, the NOVA PIC unanimously recommended that the City of Sunnyvale approve the request of the City of Milpitas.

The proposed activities are consistent with the City of Sunnyvale’s Socio-Economic Goal 5.1F: Provide job training and employment services, within constraints of operative Federal regulations and available Federal funding to address the locally-determined employment and training needs of economically disadvantaged residents and others with special needs.

To bring new services to a different community will create new challenges. With its rapid growth in the past two decades, the City has a number of communities that are different from the older neighborhoods.

With El Camino Real and CalTrain running down the middle of NOVA's six cities, public transportation access is different than for Milpitas. Making programs and services accessible and customized to the new region will require public transportation access good planning, execution and outcomes analysis

In assessing the request, the only negative consequence identified by the NOVA PIC was the need to become knowledgeable about a new community and amend NOVA's Strategic Plan to enhance services in the Milpitas area. This is especially true for youth services. (However, it should be noted that under the WIA funding allocation formula, it is likely that our region will receive more than a 50% reduction in youth funds. As a consequence, we will need to redesign all of our youth programs; thus the changes made for Milpitas would be part of a larger initiative.)

The demographics of the businesses and the labor market needing assistance in securing employment are similar to that of the consortium cities. In fact, during the past three years over 125 Milpitas residents have been served by NOVA, and we have placed participants in over 70 Milpitas companies. Much of the new industry locating in Milpitas during the past 15 years has grown from or been expansion of businesses in the NOVA cities. Given commute patterns and the Highway 237 corridor, NOVA services are as accessible to Milpitas adults during the 9:00 to 4:00 hours as they are to other perimeter cities (Palo Alto, Cupertino and Santa Clara).

There are several other advantages that staff have identified. The City of Milpitas strongly supports NOVA's vision and mission and it wishes to be an active, contributing partner to the consortium. In the next several months it plans to propose through the budget process additional staff resources to focus on economic development opportunities; this would further enhance NOVA’s ability to augment business services in the region and better enable the City of Milpitas to capitalize on NOVA's resources.

The additional population is beneficial. The City's population is approximately 63,000 people. This would bring NOVA's population to over 500,000, qualifying it for some funding opportunities not currently available.

In the past, NOVA has offered several specialized programs with the County's correctional facility, Elmwood. Partnering with Milpitas could augment these efforts. Also, NOVA has worked successfully on a number of projects with the Adult Education division of the Milpitas Unified School District and, with the whole city served by the single school district, this should expedite NOVA's understanding of community needs and resources.

After consideration, the NOVA PIC recommended that the Sunnyvale City Council rule favorably on the request of the City of Milpitas.

In general, resources to serve the job seekers and businesses of the consortium cities come from grants and contracts specifically designated for that purpose. The Workforce Investment Act funding is a formula allocation that factors in unemployment rates. As Milpitas has a higher unemployment rate than the NOVA consortium cities, the per capita allocation from the Workforce Investment Act would increase. These additional resources would enable NOVA to expand its services to Milpitas.

Initial estimates of the increased funding to NOVA from WIA allocations to serve Milpitas will be approximately $300,000. The City of Sunnyvale, under the Joint Powers Agreement, would be financially responsible for the appropriate expenditure of these funds. (NOVA's total FY 99/00 budget is approximately $13,500,000.)

The NOVA Private Industry Council and staff recommend that the City of Sunnyvale, acting on behalf of the NOVA consortium cities, authorize the Mayor to request designation from the Governor of California for a seven city consortium (Cupertino, Los Altos, Milpitas, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale) to serve as a Workforce Investment Area under the 1998 Workforce Investment Act.