United Way Executive Director Amy Rohler said due to the Pandemic, it’s hard to know if the goal to reduce the number of asset limited income constrained employees, or working poor, was achieved through the initiative, “What I do know is that there were many families helped. In total, there were an unduplicated 466 households in the city of Jamestown, many of which were engaged with a coach or mentor, many of which secured employment, and access to lots of other kinds of resources beside just employment.”

Rohler emphasized that the goal was never to eliminate poverty, but to have an impact on it, which she says the ESPRI did achieve in Jamestown. She said one of the challenges learned to overcoming poverty is something they called the “Benefits Cliff,” where someone is receiving support from the safety network like food stamps, heating assistance, and child care subsidies, “When they’re receiving all those services, they are often in a better position than someone who is actually working more and earning more money but doesn’t qualify for those. So when you actually look at everything, the value of those benefits and what it brings to their household, they’re often in a better position than someone who’s probably working a minimum wage job.”

Rohler said creating a position like a benefits transition navigator is something discussed that might help people understand the options they have. She added one of the things learned was that having a hub organization is needed for poverty reduction initiatives, “Without someone structuring how the programs are measuring what their impact is, without someone coordinating, in our case what was monthly meetings, without providing a shared platform so that we can more efficiently and effectively communicate information; it’s very hard to be effective. And we end up in our silos when we really could be working together and sharing resources and sharing information.”

Rohler said having a taskforce to continue working on poverty reduction is the next step in this process.

Pictured from left, MHA OPEN Team Leader Sheridan Smith, Executive Director Steven Cobb, and MAST Talent Pipeline and Apprenticeship Coordinator Tim Piazza meet at JCC’s Manufacturing Technology Institute to collaborate on worker retention and recruitment.

JAMESTOWN – The Mental Health Association in Chautauqua County (MHA) has created a program focused on workforce development.

Through funding from the United Way of Southern Chautauqua County and the Empire State Poverty Reduction Initiative (ESPRI), MHA created the Occupational Peer Empowerment Network program, known as OPEN. The program connects peer specialists with local residents to help lift them out of poverty by overcoming barriers to gaining, maintaining, and thriving as employees.

The OPEN staff work with employees to help tackle challenges that are keeping them from being happy, healthy, and eager to succeed.
MHA is collaborating with the Manufacturers Association of the Southern Tier (MAST) Talent Pipeline to apprise other local manufacturers of OPEN resources. The Manufacturer’s association is inviting their members to join OPEN staff at a Workforce Retention Roundtable on Thursday, June 27, at their location in the Manufacturing Technology Institute at Jamestown Community College.

Like all MHA services, all OPEN resources are free.

To learn more about the MHA, call 661-9044.

In 2016 the state said the city of Jamestown would be the recipient of nearly $1 million in aid to help fight poverty, with the United Way of Southern Chautauqua County serving as local organization to identify and recommend programs to the state.

On Tuesday the governor’s office announced the final list of recipients.

The seven programs approved for funding in Jamestown are:

• The Resource Center, $194,000 — The funding will be used to help low-income workers and 20 local employers, with the goal of improving employee retention, helping individuals transition out of poverty.
• YWCA of Jamestown, $150,000 — The Parents as Teachers PLUS program expands an existing program for teenage mothers to include those who have dropped out of high school, helping them with parenting skills and identifying a pathway to financial stability.
• Jamestown Community College, $140,000 — The funding will be used to provide educational and supportive services for low-income, single parents to help them obtain skills and credentials that lead to employment in higher-wage jobs.
• Mental Health Association in Chautauqua County, $126,000 — A support network will be established to help supplement human resources functions for designated employers with job openings, with the aim of improving employee retention.
• Community Helping Hands, $92,000 — The organization will hire low-income individuals, helping them gain work experience while building soft skills, emotional intelligence and self-awareness.
• Jamestown Public Schools, $90,000 — To help address chronic absenteeism that often prevents on-time graduation from high school, this funding will support work-based learning to help students who struggle to succeed in a traditional classroom environment.
• Chautauqua Adult Day Services, $45,000 —provide 12 weeks of soft-skills training to bilingual job candidates.

Members of the task force met at the Prendergast Library Wednesday to discuss the overall goal of trying to decrease the number households in the city that have working family members, but still struggle to make ends meet. The United Way of Southern Chautauqua County has been selected to lead the task force in developing a plan on how to best use the funding.

• LISTEN TO MAY 2017 ESPRI INTERVIEW

A number of organizations could help address the issue, and the task force will review proposals on how that can be accomplished using the grant money next month during at Sept. 7 meeting at Jamestown Community College.

ESPRI was launched in 2016, with Jamestown and 15 other cities in the state selected to participate in the poverty reduction program.

The meeting was hosted by the United Way of Southern Chautauqua County and focused on residents offering ideas and input on what strategies to use over the long-term to reduce poverty in the area.

The city of Jamestown was given a $1 million grant last year as part of the Empire State Poverty Reduction Initiative, with the United Way serving as the lead agency on how to allocate the grant funding.

United Way executive Director Tory Irgang recently told WRFA that once the public input has been collected, it will be used to come up with a final plan on how to apply the money, which will be released later this spring or during the summer.

The Center for Governmental Research – a consulting firm out of Rochester – is assisting the United Way in the effort to create and finalize the plan.

JAMESTOWN – A community meeting on how to apply $1 million in state funding toward the fight against poverty is being hosted by the United Way of Southern Chautauqua County later this week.

The community input session on how to spend the recently awarded Empire State Poverty Reduction Initiative grant will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. this Wednesday at the St. Susan Center, located at 31 Water St.

United Way of Southern Chautauqua County executive director Tory Irgang says anyone who has ideas or input on how to reduce poverty in the city is being invited to attend. The input will be used to help come up with a spending plan for the grant.

For more information on the meeting or if you want to offer input but can’t attend the meeting, you can call the United Way at 483-1561.

JAMESTOWN –  Mayor Sam Teresi delivered his 2017 State of the City message to the Jamestown City Council and members of the press on Monday night. However, just like last year, the mayor decided not to read the State of the City message to the council, and instead delivered a short statement thanking the employees who work for the city before presenting council members with the State of the City document.

Jamestown Mayor Sam Teresi (center) addresses the Jamestown City Council during its meeting on Jan. 30, 2017 as city attorney Marilyn Fiore Lehman (left) and Police Chief Harry Snellings (right) look on.

Much of the message provided a recap of the accomplishments of 2016 while also focusing on several initiatives for the new year. Following Monday night’s council meeting, the mayor spoke to the media and also acknowledged the challenges the city is currently facing.

“It was a difficult year filled with challenges, but I think the successes and opportunities outweighed the challenges and the setbacks that we had during the year,” The mayor said. “Overall, 2016 was a solid year, a strong year, and we have a pretty ambitious agenda ahead of us for 2017.”

Among the items on the agenda for 2017 is to continue to look toward economic development, with the help of the $10 million in Downtown Revitalization Initiative money that was awarded to the city by the state last summer.

“The time frame on that is the local planning committee will be wrapping up their proposals in the next few weeks. The consulting team will then have until March 1 to ship that off to Empire State Development, the Department of state, the Division of Homes and Community Renewal, and of course the governor’s office, to review our proposal as well as the proposals of the nine other DRI cities across the state,” Teresi said, adding that the city is also anxiously awaiting to start redevelopment of the Key Bank building at the intersection of Second and N. Main Streets. “We’re also looking forward to that $500,000 Restore New York Grant to plug in one of the redevelopment pieces into the former Key Bank redevelopment project.”

The mayor also said he wants to see the city tackle the poverty issue by working toward providing new jobs and a better educated workforce. To that end he’s hoping the current Empire State Poverty Reduction Initiative the city is involved with will help to create new education opportunities and collaborations with Jamestown Public Schools.

“Some of us feel that the best poverty reduction initiative is jobs being created, and you can’t have jobs being created in a local economy unless you have the educational infrastructure in place, and that starts with improving our graduation rate at the high school level. Creating other collegiate continuing educational opportunities for our merging workforce through JCC and JBC, and training to trade unions and other apprentice programs.

The mayor said the city will also continue to focus on tackling the drug epidemic, by working with and promoting new and enhanced outpatient services at UPMC ChautauquaWCA and other health organization.

And the city will also continue to work toward identifying efficiencies and shared service opportunities to help reduce costs. This includes a possible inter-municipal agreement with the Chautauqua County Sheriff’s office regarding a public safety consolidation effort with the Jamestown Police Department.

A complete copy of the mayor’s state of the city message can be found online at the city website www.JamestownNY.net.

WRFA will also talk more with the mayor about the State of the City message during our February interview, to be broadcast on Thursday, Feb. 9 at 5 p.m. on Community Matters.

Jamestown Mayor Sam Teresi announced Thursday that he’s designated the United Way of Southern Chautauqua County (UWSCC) as the nonprofit agency to administer the Empire State Poverty Reduction Initiative (ESPRI).

The ESPRI is a $1 million state grant for the design and implementation of ground-breaking initiatives to fight poverty within the city.

Jamestown was one of 16 communities state-wide selected to receive an ESPRI award earlier this year.

Through the grant program, the United Way and city will work together to build a community task force to study poverty factors specific to Jamestown, create a plan to combat those issues, and implement that plan with a variety of community partner organizations.

Of the $1 million ESPRI grant, up to $200,000 is available for the administration of the entire initiative. The balance of the funding will be available to support strategies implemented in Phase Two to reduce poverty in the City of Jamestown.

According to a report in Tuesday’s Post-Journal, Jamestown was one of 10 cities in the state selected to participate in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Empire State Poverty Reduction Initiative. As part of the state budget, the city will receive $1 million in funding for the poverty reduction initiative.

The city will use up to $200,000 of the money on the administrative cost of setting up and overseeing the initiative. RFP’s have already been sent out to several local nonprofit agencies, but any local nonprofit interested in submitting a bid for overseeing the initiative is welcome to do so.

The deadline to submit a bid is Friday, Aug. 12.  For more information, visit jamestownny.net.