A year’s worth of getting local industries on board with new class offerings at the Jackson County Learning Center has paid off.

Jim Plump, executive director of Jackson County Industrial Development Corp., recently told the Seymour Redevelopment Commission that Aisin, Cummins and Valeo agreed to provide financial support for maintenance classes some of their employees will be taking at the Seymour facility.

Other local companies also contributed, allowing the project to move forward.

In July 2022, the redevelopment commission pledged its support to expand classes at the learning center, but Plump wasn’t yet asking for a $480,000 check from the board. He just wanted the commitment so he could continue to talk to local industries to get them on board, too.

If that happened and $240,000 was put in from the Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative grant, the project could come to fruition. The total budget was $1.84 million, and the grant required a match of public and private dollars.

During a meeting May 22, after Plump shared he had secured funding from local companies, the redevelopment commission approved its contributions of $240,000 for 2022 and $240,000 for 2023.

Plump was joined at the meeting by Dan Davis, president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Jackson County. They are both members of the South Central Indiana READI team and were there on behalf of their organizations and the Jackson County Education Coalition.

Commission Vice President Nate Tormoehlen asked Plump about the companies who contributed.

“When we started putting this together, we focused on Aisin, Cummins and Valeo and looked at them and said, ‘We’re looking at you to kind of be the leaders simply because of the number of employees that you have,’” Plump said.

All three contributed at varying amounts, and Plump said he met with nearly a dozen other companies.

“As opposed to getting commitments from 15 different companies and a few thousand here and a few thousand there, the plan was in order to expedite to come back to you, we would go with Aisin companies, and they are the largest contributor to it,” Plump said. “Aisin has committed $300,000 to the project, and so Valeo and Cummins also have committed not at that level but also significant dollars.”

With all of the industry contributions, the READI team was able to meet its goal and report the good news to the redevelopment commission.

That came just in time, as Plump said the state wanted all of the READI funds to be committed by June 2023.

Part of the money will be used to purchase equipment and hire an instructor. The classes will be offered through Vincennes University.

The commission’s portion was taken out of the technology fund established when Seymour was granted a certified technology park in 2012 as a result of Cummins Inc.’s Hedgehog project. Plump said that certification was renewed in 2016 and 2020.

In 2020, the Indiana General Assembly said any certified technology park that hit its lifetime cap of $5 million could capture an additional $100,000 per year in incremental tax revenue as long as it maintains its certification through Indiana Economic Development Corp.

Plump said the uses of the local technology funds are very limited and have to be spent within the certified tech park.

In 2016, the boundaries of the certified tech park, which initially just included the Cummins campus in Seymour, were expanded to include the learning center.

“They are separated out of TIF and normal funding that you usually operate with,” Plump said to the commission during the July 2022 meeting. “These have very restricted uses that they must be used within the boundaries of the certified tech park and for the public good. … These are very limited sources of use for these funds.”

He said the initial classes would focus on maintenance.

“Every company that you talk to, if you ask them the biggest need now, it’s maintenance,” Plump said. “We have a list of their projected classes, from beginner to intermediate maintenance for electrical maintenance, so for the start, it’s going to be focused on all aspects of maintenance.”