Photo courtesy Pixabay.

The Sarasota County Commission last week devoted $15 million in grant money to vocational training, including for the construction industry trades. After about a half hour of negotiation and debate, commissioners sent half of that to the Sarasota School Board for a North Port expansion of the Suncoast Technical College, while the remainder went to establish a Building Industry Institute run by the Suncoast Builders Association.

Initially, Sarasota County Commissioner Neil Rainford supported fully funding a nearly $13.2 million request from the new Institute, preferring a private organization get the funding over one run by another public entity. He wanted to give less than $2 million to the School Board. 

“They are funded by the taxpayer in terms of the over-a-billion dollar budget for the School Board,” Rainford said.

But County Commissioners Joe Neunder and Ron Cutsinger opposed spending any money on a private, untested entity. Neunder said he recently toured School Board-run workforce programs at Riverview High School and had full confidence in the school district's ability to provide training in trades. 

“The North Port-Englewood region is the right fit,” he said.

Ultimately, Commissioner Mark Smith suggested fully funding a $7.5-million request for Suncoast Technical and delivering the rest of the money to the Building Industry Institute. That passed on a 3-2 vote with Neunder and Cutsinger in opposition. The board did not provide any funding for a $3.8-million proposal from Rebuilding Together Tampa Bay. The funding allocated all comes from a federal Community Development Block Grant program.

That means the Building Industry Institute will get about $7.5 million, a little more than half what it requested. “I wish we had more money, but this is what we got,” Smith said.

Suncoast Builders Association President and CEO Jon Mast in a letter to commissioners said his association membership knows the needs in the market for the construction industry.

“As an organization that has deep roots in this community, we recognize the great need to create economic sustainability through workforce development that will bring about long-term recovery and resiliency for the future,” he wrote.

Mast said the association already established the institute as a nonprofit. He wrote that other efforts have been successfully executed in other parts of Florida and the nation.

The budget proposed by the organization includes $5.6 million for the purchase and renovation of a property on Cattleman Road, and another nearly $4.9 million to furnish and staff it. A detailed budget also includes $224,000 in pay for a CEO and $154,000 for a CFO over a 16-month period (which includes a four-month pre-launch period).

Smith said he trusted the Institute would spend any money prudently because the Suncoast Building Association membership knew the vocational needs in the area.

Rainford said he was confident the Institute would address a demand. “It's helpful to have more than one organization producing talent to that talent pool, because I think the construction industry represents about 10% of our employees here in the region, at a minimum,” he said.

Photo courtesy Pixabay.