You want to take your seats?

Good morning.

Hello.

Hello.

It's coming.

There it is.

Good morning.

May the fourth be with you.

Yes!

I've been waiting to say that all day.

Um, good morning.

Thank you all for coming.

This is a beautiful turnout.

Um, this my name is Tanisha Murphy.

I am the public information officer for the New York State Department of Transportation.

I'm the NC and moderator for this event today.

Um, so this morning we're gonna have some opening remarks from the New York State Department of Transportation.

We'll have urban jobs task force uh talk about their report, then we'll go into a panel session.

Um, and then after that, we'll have some questions from the audience for the panel, and then finally we'll have closing remarks from the City of Syracuse Mayor Sharon Owens.

So let's get started with um the New York State Department of Transportation Regional Director, Elizabeth Betsy Parmley.

Good morning, what a turnout.

So thank you for having me today.

Um I I don't feel like I deserve to be here because so many others did so much work to get us to this point, but I am honored to be here to celebrate this milestone, and certainly on behalf of Governor Kathy Hokel and Commissioner Marie Therese Dominguez, um, thank you for being here.

So I want to start by thanking DECA Danzel and Aggie Lane and the entire Urban Jobs Task Force for inviting all of us here today on this day of celebration, reflection, and really hope for the future.

Everyone's efforts to ensure local higher initiative was implemented on the ID1 Biaduct project and has now become a blueprint across the nation.

I would also like to acknowledge Mayor Sherry Sharon Owens.

Your leadership and partnership is what got us here today as well.

So thank you.

So we talk about the ID1 Bioduct project, and as an engineer, you know, I think of it as infrastructure, right?

We're removing this aging infrastructure, we're connecting a community, but it is so much more than infrastructure, and that's why we're here today.

We are trying to connect the wrongs of the past, removing a literal and figurative shadow over a vulnerable community.

It will reconnect neighborhoods and essential services like health care and higher education.

In the 1950s, a decision was made to just build a highway through a community without thinking about what that community wanted or needed.

And now Department of Transportation, we know better, so we're doing better.

Met with the community a tremendous number of times, and we heard loud and clear that the community wanted to be part of this project.

They wanted jobs on this project.

If we are building something in their backyard, then they want to be part of this project.

So remembering the past injustices that happened during the initial construction of 81.

We worked very closely with Urban Jobs Task Force and all of our community partners to figure out how to get a local higher initiative on the project.

But as you can imagine, DOT, we are a big big government agency, we build bridges, we build highways, we don't do workforce development, so we didn't know how to do this.

But we got to the table and we figured it out.

And so to name a few people we collaborated with.

And we formed the WorkSmart New York Syracuse Build Collaborative.

And the goal of that collaborative was to increase the number of individuals working on the project and making sure they had the support so they could deliver and have a successful career and really remove those hurdles that traditionally prevented them from being on these construction jobs.

So it took a long journey, and we're going back a decade, a decade that Urban Jobs has been working on this.

And it was a we don't need to get into the details.

Maybe you will DECA, but it was uh it was an interesting journey.

There were uh pilot applications that were started on the federal government side called SEP 14, um, which would be a mechanism for federal aid construction projects to have local hire.

That came out, it got rescinded, it came back out, but then all part of the bipartisan infrastructure law.

DOT was allowed to have a local hiring preference put on our construction projects.

Huge, huge deal.

And that was in 2022.

So here we are, 2026.

We commend Urban Jobs House for keeping the pressure on us.

There was not a day where we did not have the pressure on us to deliver, and we now have over 300 local hires that have gone through the 81 project from all over the city of Syracuse on the Onunaga Nation.

This is one of the first programs of its kind across the country, and now we actually work with our counterparts across the country.

In fact, Federal Highways published a roadmap for heavy highway construction workforce development.

Big name, basically to say do what the 81 Viaduct Project did and keep doing it.

So our team regularly gives presentations about the local hire initiative, and we tell them you cannot, this is not just the DOT, we did not do this alone.

It takes so many people.

It takes building trust with your community, it takes working with your stakeholders, an unwavering commitment from everyone to open doors for a better future.

So Urban Jobs Task Force in DECA and everyone, um job well done.

And we're here, we're still at the table.

Let's continue to focus on delivering local hire across the board, not just the 81 Viaduct Project.

So thank you.

Thank you, Betsy.

Eric here is gonna turn off the jazz music for us.

He's but while he's doing that, I just want to do uh a couple acknowledgments of some uh local uh elected officials in the room, county legislator uh Brown, and Onadaga County Chairwoman Nicole Watts.

Thank you for joining us today.

Okay, thank you, Eric.

And so now, while we're why we're all here, I like to bring up Deka Eisman of the Urban Jobs Task Force.

It works.

Hi, good morning, everybody.

Thank you all for trying to get it okay.

There it is.

Um I want to start off by asking about for a show of hands.

Um, can you raise your hand if you had any involvement with the I81 local hire initiative or the campaign?

Well, I wanted to start off by saying thank you to all of y'all and say that this was a team, yes, because we thought we'd love this.

This is really has been a team effort, it's been um long time in the making, and we're just really grateful for everybody for doing this.

Obviously, especially our partners at the City of Syracuse and the New York State Department of Transportation.

So thank y'all.

Um my name is Deka Eisman, I'm the executive director of South Side Community Growth Foundation, but before that, I was a longtime president of Urban Jobs Task Force.

Um the ID1 Gocal Hire Initiative is the result of a community's call for economic justice.

The redevelopment of ID1 really created a once-in-a-generation opportunity to repair some past harm and to make sure that those most affected by the highway's harmful legacy could share in some of the benefit of its future.

Um, and so Urban Jobs Task Force in 2016 launched the ID1 local hire campaign to ensure that people in the city of Syracuse were able to benefit for some of the good paying jobs that will go to Syracuse residents.

And our report describes how both the New York State Department of Transportation and the City of Syracuse engaged in true collaborative governance, which collectively earned all of us national recognition as a model for local hiring on public infrastructure projects by the United States Department of Transportation.

So let me just talk a little bit about like what it actually took to get here.

So this didn't just happen because everybody said, oh, this is a great idea, and Urban Jobs Task Force asked us to do it, and so we're gonna do it.

It really took years of advocacy research and then collaborative governance.

So two of the key pieces that are on this slide that I want to pull out is uh the racial equity impact statement that was done by Urban Jobs Task Force and Legal Services of Central New York.

It really was the first ever comprehensive look into racial, gender, and geographic equity in the local construction trades.

And this was really rigorous research that made it hard, like really extremely hard, almost probably unacceptable, really, to dismiss our concerns as political or anecdotal.

And then I think the other key piece was the big table, which was launched by the city of Syracuse in 2020, and it brought together a diverse group of public-private right partners who had government, labor, workforce developers, and advocates all working together towards a shared goal of maximizing local hire on AD1, and that was really key.

Okay.

So to achieve this, there's actually several new systems that have been designed that didn't exist before for us to meet success.

So obviously, the key, the most important one is the local hire initiative itself, right?

The 15% goal that's incentive incentives around the project that really offers contracts, contractors of financial incentive to hire local workers, workers that live in the city of Syracuse or on the onadagonation, and additionally those experiencing barriers to employment, and this was embedded directly into the project labor agreement for the project.

Then you had the nationally acclaimed Syracuse Bill Program, which is a pre-apprentip direct entry program that was being worked on before the local hire initiative before the commitments were even made.

So we knew that if we were going to get some type of local hire commitment, that the community wasn't like they didn't have the skills yet, right?

The community had to be upskilled.

So we knew that we had to do that before, and um we pushed the mayor's office, and they ultimately they worked with a center state CEO to get that off the ground so that we couldn't get there and say, well, we set the goal, but we didn't we couldn't hire them because they weren't trained, right?

So there was a lot of foresight and a lot of intentional thought that went into this, as well as the work smart New York Collaborative, which Betsy just talked about a little bit, but that's another kind of collaborative space that meets monthly and looks at the local hire data, the workforce equity data, um we track outcomes, we work together to refine the pipeline really to make it easier for people to access these jobs and to collaborate on outreach to them.

So this is what you've been waiting for, right?

Like, how do we do?

Like it took so much to get this off the ground, and really glad to report that the outcomes are much better than I think any of us even could imagine when we set forth on doing this.

So, first of all, um, we're just about meeting the goals.

So, overall, across contracts, about 14.9% of all workers on a project are local hires.

Um, locals have earned over at the time that so this is this information is from January 2023 to August 2025, right?

There's so there's more, even more data now.

So at this point, people have earned over 10 million dollars in wages.

Um out of all the apprentices that work on the project, 31.45% of them are local hires, so they represent a great amount of new workers on the project, which is a telling piece, and then about 80% of everybody who is benefiting from the local hire programs, or people who are filling those jobs are people of color.

And really, what this says to us is right, the the ID1, uh, our first REAS report was a racial equity report, right?

So, really what this says is not only did this work, but it worked for who we intended it to work for, I think, which is even more important.

Um, and then how did we become a national model on how does ID one size up against the previous publicly funded projects that we reviewed in the racial equity impact statement?

So ID1 had more than two times the local higher rate of the Lakeview Amphitheater and the New York State Fair Expo.

So it did it blew all of them out of the order.

It had a higher workforce participation of black and Latino workers than I-690, which is another heavy highway project, and that resulted in an almost 8% increase in the wages that workers of color specifically earned on the project.

And also this project had two times more than two times apprentice hours worked.

And again, this this was key, and this was telling in the report because the actual amount of apprentices working on the projects were about the same, but the apprentices on the 81 Vida project worked double the hours.

So they were utilized more, and we think that is because of the intentional design around the PLA and some other things that were done in the process.

Anyone can access this at any time.

This was a public accountability measure that the DOT agreed to to have right public transparency around what we're saying that we're doing.

So at the time that this report was completed, there was about 263 local workers that have benefited as of right now, it's up to three or four.

And there's actually more data on our website where you can get specifics on how many apprentices are working, what trades are the locals in.

Are they women?

Are they people of color?

All of that is on their website.

But I just wanted to bring attention to how we're doing on a local hire goal overall.

So in terms of the percentage of workers, um contract one, contract three, and contract five are all exceeding the goal, and then in terms of hours worked, uh, contract four is exceeding the goal, with all the others being very close, and these numbers vary month to month, but we are very pleased with them and think that they show the the work commitment and dedication of everybody involved.

So two things can be true at once, right?

So, one, um, this is really great, and this is something that can be celebrated, but also at the same time, um, we can always do better to continue to build on that progress.

So, what the data really tells us that we still need to do, still needs to be done, still need to work on, is to enhance the evaluation really specific to the individual to see what the actual impact was on each person.

Um, want to measure their retention, their quality of life outcomes, things like that, um, to further engage ID1 contractors in the broader collaboration efforts for a stronger feedback loop to address gender and contractor equity via dedicated committees focused on child care and minority contractor participation to establish independent oversight through a third party and to expand the big table so that we don't lose all of this progress, that we don't lose all of these structures or all these systems and all of this success that has been built over about a decade now.

And finally, um right, this is a the big table didn't just produce results for ID one, as Bessie shared a little bit earlier, it really produced a model for how Syracuse and cities and DOTs across the country can do this differently.

Um the initiative really proves that equitable hiring on public infrastructure is not only possible, but it's replicable, replicable.

We can do this.

Um, that when you treat community organizations as genuine partners rather than just manage stakeholders, you produce better outcomes.

Um, that collaborative governance works when all parties share an accountability and remain at the table long term, and that public investment can and should create pathways to opportunity for the full diversity of the communities that they serve.

Um so our question now is where do we apply this model next?

And with that, I would say thank you.

Uh thank you.

I just wanted to um very briefly before Tanisha comes back up to say um that there's no way to name everybody that's been a part of this.

We we tried in the acknowledgement section of the report, um, but we just want to say thanks again to everyone and especially those uh listed here who helped us put on this event today.

Thanks.

Thank you, Deka.

Man, it just makes you proud to be from Syracuse in Syracuse.

We're making history here for the rest of the nation.

It's a beautiful thing.

Thank you.

Okay, now we are going to move on to our panel discussion.

The peas are popping today.

Okay.

So we will um uh first of all, I'd like to introduce everyone from the panel, and when I call your name, if you can please come up.

Um, we'll start with uh City of Syracuse Mayor Sharon Owens, Becca Eisen from Urban Jobs Task Force, Al Marzulo with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, local 43.

Elizabeth Betsy Carnley from the New York State Department of Transportation, and Abby Farrow, Syracuse Build Pathways to Apprenticeship.

All right, thank you, everyone.

So we're gonna start um just by asking all of you uh the same question.

So if you can just pass the mic down and answer it, and Decca, um, we'll start with Mayor Sharon Owens.

Let you get your ticket and girl.

Uh so um so to help set the stage for our audience, can each of you share a bit about how you came to be a part of this work and what their involvement in the ID1 local hire initiative has been, what your organization brought to the table, what uh and what were your responsibilities, what you were responsible for, and maybe what drew you personally to uh the F to this effort.

Uh good morning.

Um I became a part of this process because you don't tell Aggie and Deka no.

And so um the Urban Jobs Task Force has been laser focused in creating employment opportunities for people who lived in the footprint of the viaduct, whose families generationally were impacted by its development.

And so we began a I can't remember what year we we began working on the federal application.

Yeah, it was we were we were zooming because it was still COVID going on, and uh people were just going back outside, but we were on Zoom every single week, shouting out Scott, he was on the Zooms every single week, working through this application process to do what people believe was the impossible to get local hiring on a federal project, and we just continued to just push through to get that done, and then the federal government changed the rules.

We were ahead of the game, and uh continue through this process.

Um I'll talk about uh my role was uh well I was deputy mayor at the time, and my role was the liaison for City Hall to continue to make sure these meetings happen, that the voices of the community were heard, and to assist Greg Lowe, who isn't here today with the big table initiative.

Um, a couple things stand out for me.

You saw some great numbers, every single one of those numbers represent a person.

And these those those individuals represent um something that an opportunity that was provided for them and a change, transformational change in their lives.

We're talking about changing economic foundations for people's homes, and that's what that project was able to do.

It is a national model.

Uh Syracuse, we don't get we're not here to pat ourselves on the back, but we are absolutely here to celebrate.

We're not patting ourselves on the back because the work continues.

And this is a model for other major initiatives in this community, and I got a couple on the back of my mind.

It is a model, and absolutely the guts of it is there, it just needs to be tweaked for the the particular project.

The other thing that um I'll say is that the the there are a couple things around those people that always hit home for me.

Every single pathways graduation, I leave like floating on air.

Floating on air.

There is a um a gentleman I met, he's a blogger in the community, and he he he's back home from prison and doing doing amazing.

But he was telling me a story, and Ebony, I want you to hear this.

And he said he met up with some of the guys that he knew from the neighborhood who weren't making the best choices and heard something about this thing called Pathways to Apprentice.

And so when he met up with them again, he was like, Hey, what's going on?

They was like, Yeah, I uh I completed this program, I'm doing this work and construction, highway construction, highway construction.

And the thing they said to him was man, I'm never going back.

That is the transformational work that we have been doing.

Buying homes.

Deka shared a uh a story about a young man who said for the first time ever he was able to take his family on vacation.

Life changing work that we should not pat ourselves on the back for because we still have work to do, but we should absolutely celebrate that.

And it has to be replicated.

And I charge us to say in this community for every major project, someone else shouldn't be replicating our pro.

We should be replicating it.

Anyone that doesn't know me?

My name's Al Marzulo.

I'm the business manager and financial secretary for IBEW Local 43.

Well, that's a loaded question that you ask, and there's so much to share that in a short period of time.

So, how did I or the IBEW get involved with this project?

Well, it stems back many years, and what comes to my mind was an ask by Emeritus uh Mayor Ben Walsh to meet with him.

Hey, there's this project called I-81.

And we really need a education program to build for those that live in our community to go to work.

You don't tell the mayor no.

So we met.

The truths are we met right in front of Kitty Hoy's.

He was hustling on a nice summer day down right in front of uh Kitty Hoyne's, and we carried a normal discussion about how families were, how life is, and then how do we make better the lives of those in the underserved communities with opportunities to go to work within the trades?

I said, Mayor Walsh, the IBEW is already doing that.

You are, yes, we do that every day.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is built in to the framework of the IBEW.

I says, but we have a program that we built with the Syracuse City School District.

It's there.

Oh, come on, just learning about that.

I says, Mayor Walsh, I don't know.

Can we replicate that?

We absolutely can, without question.

The other person that we spoke to shortly thereafter, we had lunch, was common counselor Alan Hudson, who's been an advocate from day one to help those in our underserved communities to get into the trade groups.

Now, the trade group sometimes, there's a lot, there's many groups, and we may not always agree all the time, but at the end of the day, we knew we needed to change.

We needed to change the bias that were absolutely in our organizations, whether you wanted to admit it or not.

Internal bias or external bias, it's there.

How do we change that?

How do we make that work?

Because at the end of the day, raising the ties to lift all the boats in our communities, what we're all about, always been.

So when Deka came to the IBEW and shared her experiences, we listened.

We listened.

And we shared we've got to figure out ways to make this program successful.

So we embarked on a strategic plan with long-term goals and short-term goals and how to do it.

And to shorten this up, to my left, Ebony Farrell is the heart of that program without question in my heart of the state.

As we're being real, because that's all you're gonna get out of me, is getting 15 other trade groups to commit to a design of a program, training directors, to buy into the programs.

What's an easy?

No.

Then the other piece was center state CEO, and in the crowd is Amy Durfe.

One hundred percent integral piece, and her counterpart Dominic Robinson at the time.

Those are shout-outs.

Yeah, the top search result.

And the approach that we had was that the person that needed to lead the training directors of all of the trades needed to be someone within the trades.

My comments to the Amy's and the Dominicans were keep Ebony involved.

Keep her involved.

What did we learn?

From our training directors.

That Ebony became family without question.

Trust was there.

I remember the call from then Dominic Robinson said, hey, we need to pick a leader here.

Who is that going to be?

I didn't even hesitate.

Ebony.

Are you sure?

I'm positive.

And from there, the program takes off.

So how did I get involved?

That's how I got involved.

And that's where we are today.

And as I watch this program flourish from behind the scenes, and watching the young men and young ladies and the underserved communities get into the trades to have stable middle class jobs.

To help not be on social systems anymore, and be an integral part of the community, be proud of it.

Be proud of it is what the IBW, what the trade groups are all about.

That's a snippet of what I can share with you, and I hope I answered most of those questions that you asked me.

I will now hand the mic over.

Thank you.

I feel like it's appropriate to hand to Ebony.

Yes.

Yes.

I appreciate that.

So one, I want to thank everybody who's speaking so highly of the program, Pathways to Apprenticeship on the Sarah Hughes Bill Initiative.

How I became a part of this is I think I was in the right place at the right time.

I've been doing advocacy work for quite some time.

And when it comes down to the I-81 local hire, um Linessa's here, Deka's here, like we were on the ground going door to door saying, hey, we need the community to pay attention.

And somebody called us a credible messenger in the community, myself along with the others who are part of that, including uh Chris Montgomery, who we are able to step into the communities that we've been living in and say to our community, this is important, pay attention, we need your input.

So that's how uh the beginning of it started, and then um, because of that work, uh I was tapped on the shoulder to say, hey, can you help to develop this program that we've started, we have the trades, at least a couple of trades at the table.

We have uh the curriculum, we need we need some help from someone who can really like uh build this out.

Can you do that?

And um, that's how I stepped into that role.

A part of why I um came to the table as far as um personally, I was tired of seeing our community um trying to survive.

And at some point, we need to be able to thrive as a community, really as a society, and so anything that I can do to help impact that in a positive way, I'm I'm down for it, and this seemed like a great opportunity when you talk about the trades and how it grants access to middle class, livable wage, not just jobs, but careers.

And so I didn't have to shoulder it myself.

I have partners that are at the table, city county, the trades, um, anchor partners that were saying we're all looking at a shared goal, how do we get this done?

So that's that's how I came to the table.

That's that's my goal is to make a positive impact.

I'm tired of folks having to live from paycheck to paycheck, crisis to crisis.

Um, it's time to start start thriving as a society as a whole.

Uh part of my responsibility and the work that I do is to take an individual that's in the class, look at the barriers that might be there, pull out barriers that might not necessarily be visible, and help mitigate those to develop a person in a holistic manner.

So I can't remember who just said it, but we're not looking to reduce numbers.

These are people.

Every number that you see up there is a person, is a life, is a mother, a father, a son, a daughter, it's their person.

So how do we make sure that the work that we do not just last for the moment but carries forward for generations?

So that's that's why I do what I do.

Oh, I ask those questions.

These are hard people to follow.

Um, so I was fortunate enough to join the team as the project director of the 81 Viaduct Project, and I have to give all the credit to Scott Butler from our team.

Um just took off running and got this on our contract, which you know, I think is is it's huge.

We're we're not used to doing this.

So I like to think of it, we have the easy part of this.

We're just we put it in our contract and we're holding our contractors accountable, and uh, you know, seeing these numbers and these people get the job.

So um I want to say thank you to everyone who who did all the really really hard work so then we could deliver it in our contract.

So um I'll defer my time to DECA.

Um, yeah, I won't add too much more to it.

Um, I I think maybe the more important part for me is why I joined Urban Jobs Task Force, and it really was similar to what Ebony is talking about.

I was up at SU at a conference talking about poverty, and I stood up to say that you know, I had a full bachelor's degree from Syracuse University, but was not able to secure a full-time job.

And then after that, Aggie, the co-founder of Urban Jobs Task Force, came up to me and she gave me like a whole three-minute speech about what Urban Jobs Task Force was, and was like, you know, can you guys?

I was like, I mean, yeah, she's like, you know, do I have any questions?

I'm like, no, that sounds like something I need to be a part of.

Um, and I had no idea really what it was.

Um, and I I joined, and the more that I learned, right?

Urban Jobs Task Force is a local uh racial and economic justice organization that advocates for and with marginalized people in the city of Syracuse for equitable access to uh employment opportunities.

So that was very easy for me to resonate with that mission as somebody who had lived experience with it.

So uh when I came on and we were talking about 81 and saying, you know, this is gonna be not dozens, not hundreds, but thousands of good paying jobs.

I thought about how I would drive to my community and you would see construction work happening, you will see no people of color, right?

And also, you know, you would hear about like I have family members, my dad, my uncles who went through um pre-construction training programs, right?

And they were graduating with certificates and not jobs.

So we right, but then at the same time, you had a lot of like politicians or other powerful stakeholders saying this is gonna be a job changer for a Syracuse 81 is gonna break so many jobs.

And we were like, wait a minute.

No, no, it's not actually, because the these people are not represented in that industry now.

They would need to be trained now.

You would need to make some real commitments to see that.

You would have to um infuse greater diversity within the trades, right?

For that to happen.

So we were like, it can be, but here's all the things that need to happen first, and I will admit that even at the time when we were asking for it, we had no actually real true idea, all the things that it would take to get it off the ground.

It was like every time we did something and we took one step of progress, even after everybody committed, it was like, oh, there's oh, and we gotta do this, and we gotta do this, and we gotta, you know, you sit there and you think like it really took all of this to get just three hundred a little over 300 people, that don't really sound like that much.

And we're talking about doing 10 years of work, and it's like the answer is yes.

The barriers are that great, yes.

The historic exclusion and harm is that great, yes.

It was designed to perfection that well, yes, that it takes extreme intentionality and commitment, partnership, collaboration, and accountability to achieve what we have to involve here.

Yeah, that's my story.

Thank you, Deka.

Thank you, everyone.

Um, Mayor Owens, collaborating, collaborative governance sounds good in theory, but it's genuinely hard in practice.

While former Mayor Walsh launched the big table, he charged you directly with leading that process.

Can you take us through uh inside what that actually looked like, how you held together diverse and sometimes competing group of stakeholders around a shared goal over multiple years?

What that demanded of you and your office and what you learned about was it you know, learned about what it really takes to be up with work on that kind of uh collaborative governance.

So Deka said one key word is intentionality, you have to be intentional, you have to write it into we have um OKRs for the city of Syracuse to keep us focused on intentionally strategically good voice, focused on initiatives.

The big table was one of those, and it was one of the responsibilities that I had.

Um but first of all, the big table was not the city's idea, it was the urban job task force idea.

But I will credit with the urban jobs task force because the ideas said we need to have a wide variety of stakeholders, and many of those were government.

So they came to us and said, City, we need you to take the lead on getting all these stakeholders to the table, and so again, I have to give credit to Greg Lowe who really um helped in in moving this forward, but it was intentional and became embedded within the strategic fabric of my responsibility.

I have several things I was working on, especially right out of COVID.

Um big table was absolutely one of those things.

Um there's no easy answer to what you just asked.

The answer is you have to just do it, and you have to listen to the the structure of the big table was not the cities, it was the suggestions from the urban jobs task force, ACOU, other community stakeholders who said for it to be effective, this is what we need to be able to ensure that is there, and it also has to have structured milestones that we can hold ourselves accountable to.

So we're just not needing to meet because I don't know about you, but I get sick of meeting to meet.

So it had structured outcomes embedded within it that we held each other accountable for.

Um, and and you say, Oh, the DOT's gonna come and give reports on the on the on the status of the project.

Yes, they are various entities.

How is the workforce collaborative doing?

They're going to report on it.

Every aspect of it, each time reporter.

Meet quarterly.

Um, it is absolutely um uh well, you guys are going, do you still need the big table?

Absolutely.

And the big table itself is a model.

And I got a couple of projects on the back of my head right now.

Some of the stakeholders are sitting in this room staring at me.

But the big table is a model for how we can collaboratively talk about private progress, a very large complicated projects.

DOT is a very large, complicated project.

Might as well just say it.

Lead replacement is a large complicated project.

So I'm like, we need to be we need a big table.

We made a big table.

We need a big table.

I'm there.

But just not lead water, lead, lead, lead.

Yeah.

Okay, I'm done.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, Al, so the trades don't always get credit for being part of the solution on workforce equity.

What made IBEW Local 43 willing to lean into this initiative early, and what has participating in it taught you or changed about how you think about building your membership?

Yeah.

Well, that's a lot to think about there, but uh you need to change your culture, right?

Let's get real at the end of the day for the IBEW.

I'm gonna lead in what I let in with the last question.

We're all about diversity, equity, and inclusion.

It's built into the fabric, the fabric, and the framework of our organization.

But again, for us, I come back to really the same answer I gave in the last question.

It's always about opportunity, always about opportunity.

For those in the underserved communities, less fortunate, how do we build them up and give them opportunity?

That's what drives us every day at the IBEW.

When I look at it and I say to you with the team over at the IBEW why we got involved, we have large projects and large contractors that come into our organization.

Is that a win?

Yeah.

It is, right?

The biggest wins when I sit with my membership development team is that young man or young lady who's striving to do better, wants to work with their hands, don't want doesn't want to go off to college and get a job in the IBEW.

That's it.

One person at a time to give them those opportunities is what we're all about and will continue to be about.

And the same with the trades.

And we all had to look within and figure out.

We all have internal bias.

As leaders, you can deny it.

If you really want to lead, you need to look from within.

The external biases is well.

So in that approach is why the IBW gets involved, stays involved here.

Because the reality of it is we get several applications every year to come into the IBEW.

But if we can work with the ebony of the world and our community to figure out more opportunities for those in our underserved communities, that's what we need to do.

And that wasn't easy, because you shared it.

It was not easy to change mindsets.

Right, Amy?

I'm looking at Amy Durfee, etc.

Was not easy, but we got there through a lot of hard work and grip.

Like Mayor Owens said, just gotta do it.

It's not in what you say, my great-grandfather said this to me a long time ago.

I didn't know what it meant until I got a little older.

It's not in what you say, it's in what you do.

There's a lot of those out there that say an awful lot, but the end result doesn't amount to much.

So what we say and what we do at the IBEW is meant to have lasting careers right here in our community for those that live in our community.

As these large projects come into play, I 81 and other projects that we have coming our way.

We're blessed to have them.

But we want those that live, play, pray, in our communities to be part of that.

Stay here in upstate New York, right here in Syracuse.

We don't need your moving away.

We need you here.

Within the trade groups, the amount of new members that we need is astronomical.

But I will say this, you must put in the hard work.

Nothing is handed to you in life, nothing's handed to you in general.

So if you put that hard work in, we will give you every opportunity with those surrounded around you.

Put their arms around you and help you get there to be able to live in this community and work in this community and be an integral part of it.

Hope that answered the question.

I've learned in my life the last four months.

If I have it in my head, I need to get it out because something squirrel is gonna happen over here.

Um the accomplishment, your accomplishment is only as good as the lesson that you learned.

So here's a lesson that we learned.

I appreciated the urban jobs task force because they were laser focused on workforce, getting people on the job, individuals.

Because we were so focused then on that, it took till after contracts began to manifest themselves that we realized that equal development had to happen for businesses.

And particularly because this project is adds a layer, another layer of complexity because of disadvantaged business entrepreneur requirements that are gender neutral.

So not minority, not women.

But if there was a lesson to be learned, you always gotta learn from your experience.

That was absolutely one of them.

Not too late.

But we could we probably should have gone down a parallel path.

But I appreciate them.

We went to Rochester, they invited a bunch of us over to Rochester, and Rochester was saying, you know, what was the secret sauce?

Well, that does not exist.

It's hard work.

But the urban jobs task force, whoever your community organization is in Rochester, they have to keep the main thing the main thing.

And that's what the urban jobs task force did.

It was about getting people on the job.

But the what we so fervently were doing in that, we should have been doing a parallel path for business.

That's a lesson that we learned.

So I'll ask one more question, and then we'll go to the audience for questions.

So Ebony, um, Syracuse Bill was designed from scratch and intentional with intentionality and received national acclaim in its own right.

Could you walk through some of the design decisions that you think most set this program apart from typical pre-apprenticeship programs?

What it took to build something like this from the ground up in Syracuse and what you've seen it mean for the participants who have been coming through it.

Alright.

Thank you for that question.

Um part of building it from scratch, I took a lot of the lessons that I had learned over the years of being in workforce development, working with different agencies and compiled it together to make sure that in building this one that we got it, we got it right and could build and could uh build on top of that.

So one of the main things was it needed to be a paid training that was, yes.

Not only was it a decision that was made, but it was supported holistically.

Uh, if we're gonna train people in this workforce, we ought to supplement their income while we're doing it.

Um I believe it was DECA who just said a lot of times we're training people and giving them certificates, but weren't helping them get a job.

Well, if you're paying them while you're training them, one that is a job, um, and they can use that time to really reflect on bad habits and develop better ones.

So that was the intention around that.

Um, also uh building it from scratch.

I have to shout out all of our partners, especially our trades partners who stayed at the table.

Um we're talking about conversations, we're talking about having uncomfortable conversations.

We're talking about making sure that there's a space held to hold those uncomfortable conversations in honesty, um, authenticity, and making sure that there can be a resolution, not just people being uncomfortable for for the sake of uncomfortability.

So I want to shout out the carpenters, of course, IBW, the plumbers and feathers, which I am a union member of.

We got the iron workers, the bricklayers, the painters, the roofers, the operating engineers, the sheet metal workers, and the insulators who are all a part of the team of Packers.

Um during these conversations, like uh we learned from our industry trade partners what it took to actually be in this industry, so vehicles to work as a component of pathways from the very onset of the program, making sure that people had access to a reliable vehicle in upstate New York every winter it snows.

We know this.

We can't catch the bus out an hour out, we can't take an Uber.

So, how do we actually support the community that we're trying to build?

Um recently I've added mental health services, which is another great support.

Um, we also help out financially.

So, a main part of building this was understanding that funding is critical.

We can say that we're gonna help people, but do we have the funding to actually implement a program at this scale?

And so the partners, including Center State, made sure that as we were building this, we were building it so that we were not just helping the community, but we could sustain that going forward.

And we're also in our 10th class getting ready to graduate on Friday.

So we're doing a great job.

When we talk about uh making sure that we're helping out financially, a lot of folks are coming from other industries or entry-level wage employment, so to transfer that into a career path in construction is not the easiest thing.

We didn't want to add financial barriers as we were helping people take that leap of faith.

So a part of the pathways, a part of the decision, um, building it from scratch, was to pay the first three months of union dues, the initiation fees, to buy the basic tools that folks needed to get into the trades, um, to make sure that they were supplied with things like hard hats, still tool boots, things that cost a lot of money, and that initial cost could deteriorate from actually staying in your trade.

Um, supportive systems, such as like case management, we follow our uh graduates for up to a year, but for me, until they actually journey out of the apprenticeship programs.

For me, we still stay with them.

So when we're talking about what were some of the design elements, I designed it along with the team to make sure that pathways is a family.

Sometimes we're the only face that we see on these construction sites, and it's important regardless of who that face belongs to, that you know that you're safe in that space.

So we did those things as well.

Um, what makes this I want to say different besides the things that that I've listed, like I said at the beginning, making sure that the conversation continues.

Like we're not done.

Um, our trade partners, we meet monthly.

Uh we meet to discuss what's going on with the apprentice who's already in the trades, and it's important that that open and honest communication remains, so that if there is a barrier, it can be mitigated.

Those are just some of the decisions that we made on trying to build this from the ground up, and um, I'm glad to hear uh feedback from folks who I'm not even in the space with who are speaking highly of our commitment to support them.

So those are the things.

Thank you.

Uh so we'll take questions.

Anybody have a question they would like to ask, would like to ask one of the panelists.

Okay.

I just would like um talk about not only the big table, but all the preparation that right the core team.

Oh, yeah.

And that commitment.

Because that the big table wouldn't happen without the core team.

Without the core team, and core team members, please raise your hand.

Uh there you go.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And the core team uh is the the group of folks again.

I mentioned Greg Lowe's name again, who would make sure we had these meetings scheduled.

Um that mantle is passed on that Eric Ennis.

Um, and uh it is the preparation that goes into the big table meeting.

Because what we don't want to have is a meeting that would just, and they're two and a half hours.

We're sitting there and we're we're we're very um indected to speak to this too, because she's on the core team, very mindful of what it is we want, what is the end result of the meeting when people turn off the Zoom, and we found that was the easiest way to do it to get all those folks in we we we weighed going in person?

Like that's too much logistics, we just want to get to the meat of the matter, and so we continue to make them virtual.

Um, but uh it is that work on the core team is being very intentional about what it is we want to do, and now as Deka mentioned, we're we're into well into the contract, well into the project.

The project is coming home, hot and heavy into Syracuse.

You are paused in progress.

So when you're waiting at an intersection, you are paused in progress.

But where do we go with the big table as it relates to the 81 project?

And so we those are the conversations we're having now.

I all I'll add to that is um really just there there had to be some intentionality on how the big table was designed, right?

Um so we went to the mayor and said, Hey, we need you to use your political power to bring these partners together.

Um, but I think you know, some of that trust that that has been talked about a couple different times, it was established through that partnership because not only did he degree to do it, but also that the city was gonna partner with us on how it was going to work.

So Paul at Legal Services along with some members at Urban Jobs Task Force worked really hard.

There was months of planning for how would that run?

How frequent would it meet?

What uh subcommittees would it need, who needed to be involved.

Um, and when you look at it now, there are sometimes on the big table, there's over 80 people on that call.

So there's the core team.

Yeah, the core team meets every two weeks to be planning out those agendas, um, and different partners will come in and out.

So the state sometimes if they're the quasi member of the core team, they have to come in and kind of help us plan how we'll do it.

Um, and then there's a bunch of um subcommittees at the big table, one including um Nike and Families for Freedom Now around uh resident and worker safety directly in the 81 footprint.

So there is a lot of people involved in making this happen, and we're grateful for all of that.

I will just add the uh the other component, um Ebony talked about a fundamental aspect of the training was we had to pay the participants.

Can't expect people to go through that many weeks and lead their job.

On the partner side, at a point, DECA came to me and said, This is really getting hot and heavy, here's a lot going on.

Everybody else has a paycheck or some money and social, but we don't.

And so we had ARPA money.

And so we entered into a contract with the uh uh urban jobs task force um that extended over a few years.

So you pay for that, okay.

But yeah, I mean, you know, I say all the time that we go to our stakeholders for information and survey them to death, but they don't get compensation.

So that was uh an agreement we made with the opera dollars to ensure that um they were able to bring on a part-time staff person, able to do some things with um the resources from that contract.

So the city was um ready to put their money where their mouth was.

And I I'll just add to that end while maintaining our independence.

Yes, I think that is a very risky thing to do.

Right?

You you know, the whole time the city, the state, everybody knew that any given moment, if we felt the moment called for it, we was gonna make some noise, we was gonna implement some type of pressure tactic.

Um, but we also knew and we recognize as the time went on that we're asking them to do something that really hasn't been done before in in the way that we're asking, so we can't just point our fingers and say, do this.

Um I think that over time we showed that we were not just advocates from the outside, but we were also subject matter experts and worthy partners.

We were bringing data, we were bringing guidance, and we were showing up, and I think that we were being reasonable and compromising just as much as everyone else in the process because this was a di of uh a multi-year give and take.

It's still a negotiation actually, till till this day as we continue to figure um things out.

Just one more thing.

I'm sorry I keep talking, but this has been a wonderful journey.

Um, and I get a lot um Deka's point about um the compensation didn't mean any compromise.

I get that a lot from um partners of mine or colleagues of mine, whether it was police reform or George Floyd, uh uh uh George Floyd or um whether it was um led Freedom Now, the the Urban Jobs Task Force, people say they're partners of yours, why are they in the press or why are they down there protesting?

I said that's what they do.

That's their job.

I have to respect their job if I'm going to be a true partner.

One more question.

Last question.

Well, kudos to all though on the intentionality surrounding the workforce development component, and my question is in your um subsequent um big table discussion, is there any um uh inkling about um contractors, sub or subcontractors for the I81 project.

So, for instance, Ebony, as you continue to train cohorts or in the mix who might think about becoming a construction owner, and then mayor and the rest of the panel, anything about um actual construction subs or subsubs at this late game.

Yeah, we have to attention now, we have to, and this is the area of gap and area of focus that we have to hone in.

We have to lean into that, Michelle.

And so as much um effort that we put into the labor part of it and continue, and we have to do so on the business side.

So I don't really have that answer right now.

I'm sure there are individuals, but I really want those individuals to get on a job site and earn a paycheck.

So I I what we do sometimes is distract people.

So if they're able to get on that job site, making prevailing wage, that's what they need to do.

However, there are businesses that we need to lean into, whether it's with on ramp or or or or any other entity that's out there right now, Jubilee and what they're doing, the intentionality, and we have to put some some real focus on Dagger County in the one stop.

Really putting some some hard measurables to that population.

So I want to add to that as well.

Thank you, Mayor Owens.

In the IBEW, we have many that decide as they go through the apprenticeship program and come out into the contracting world.

One that comes to mind is Shawnee Davis.

And she's doing outstanding.

You're not standing to the point when she got the phone call from myself to introduce the president of the United States a few years ago.

We couldn't be, she couldn't have been more grateful, and we couldn't be more proud of her.

So that is again built into the framework and the fabric of what we do in the trade groups here as well.

So one other piece I did want to share that I think is important in the actual programmatic side of the pathways program is the actual curriculum.

That actual curriculum, as we sat and discussed it, it's called MC3.

And it's the multi-core craft curriculum, which is built upon the frameworks of all the trade groups.

And it's a nap to the North American Building Trade Union that has helped us build that.

And when we sat was and when we sat with Center State and their team, and have many of the city, that is the program that we put in place.

Now, all the enhancements that we had to put in place are Syracuse base without question, right?

Um and then within all of those uh curriculum based, there are certain trades that needed you know better math skills, better reading comprehension and math.

But I just wanted to share that as well because MC3 is the program that the trades use in order to get to pre-apprentip, or better yet, direct entry, which is another critical component.

Sorry again, just one more thing.

This is highway construction, but I do not want us to leave here without remembering this is about people.

So another real story.

I I want you guys to hear real stories.

I'm walking out of, got a meeting at SU, I'm walking out of the shine student center on my phone, not paying attention.

That's a bad habit of mine.

And I hear Mayor Owens, and I look up and it's Shannon Thomas.

Original Pathways graduate, proud IBW member, he's with a couple of his colleagues.

I said, Shannon, what's going on?

He was like, he said, hey, what's going on?

I said, what are you doing up here?

He said, we're at uh Bird Library doing some work.

And it was funny to watch him, because as he caught up with his colleagues, I hear them, you know the mayor.

And in my mind, I say, you damn right he knows the mayor.

The mayor knows Shannon Thomas.

Yeah, and he introduced the president of the United States.

A path news.

All right, thank you all.

And Mayor, um, if I could just have you come up here and give the closing remarks, uh I mean, you guys have heard just amazing conversations, amazing.

Um hope when you're leaving here, you'll understand that um collaboration partnership does not work with people who are intentionally focused on making a change.

And we are all very uh honest brokers, and we are honest with ourselves and honest with you, we were feeling our way in the dock for a lot of that.

But every time somebody said the light switch is over here, and we hit the light switch and then move to the next phase and kind of feel where are we going with this?

And somebody's like, here's another light switch.

But that was the importance of the partnership and be able to create a level of trust and accountability.

And the two go hand in hand.

And so as we continue this on, uh my good friends with Led Freedom, I'll be calling you.

We need a big table.

So let's continue to work because that project is not over.

And the important thing that Betsy team keeps reminding us of is that while 81 is the big, big, big, big um highway project in front of us.

The DOT is all over the place doing work.

And so to be able to work with my colleagues, Malik Evan in Rochester, and we went over there to talk to them.

There's a big project in Buffalo.

I get on the phone with uh uh uh uh Sean Ryan over there and say, you need to get this project and you need to get beforeward thinking.

You know, they don't they're not blessed with the team we have over here with Betsy.

Different, I didn't know that until I started talking to other people.

There are different, you know, different regional teams, and I thank God we got this right, but the mayor's office has some weight in the conversation, and so um um uh uh my my sister Dorothy and Pleas has some stuff going on over there near her in Albany.

So um city halls have maybe felt that they do not have a state state in um of authority and power in this, but we absolutely do.

But we the best thing is not to go over there with a hammer hitting people over the head, but creating partnerships, and we have been blessed in this community to be able to do that, and we will continue to do that.

We have the model, we have the group who focused in on that model, and they ticked a lot of people off, but that was their job to put the fire under us, and you see the results.

So thank you all for your time today.

Thank you, that concludes our program.

Thank you.