Over the last seven years, the Jackson County Education Coalition has contracted with Jackson County Industrial Development Corp. Workforce Partnership for ongoing work at the Jackson County Learning Center.

Dan Davis with the education coalition said the partnership between the agencies and the Seymour Redevelopment Commission to help fund that work has been paying big dividends to the community.

“As Jim Plump (executive director of JCIDC) has said over many years now, it seems like our community recognizes that providing a well-educated and well-trained workforce is really essential to both attracting new businesses with their new jobs as well as, even more importantly these days, retaining the workers and the business operations that we have already existing here in Seymour and across the county,” Davis told the commission during a recent meeting.

When the coalition and commission entered an agreement in 2015, Davis said that provided funding from the tax increment financing district primarily. Later on, certified technology park money was put in. That money was paid out in annual grants to the coalition.

About 76% went to Workforce Partnership to fund its work, and the rest stayed with the learning center for the work going on there, Davis said.

Davis and Plump attended the recent commission meeting seeking a second round of funding.

“It’s for the work that the education coalition has contracted with Workforce Partnership over the last seven years as well as ongoing work at the learning center,” Davis said.

Letters of support from three local industries — Rose Acre Farms, Royalty Companies and Excel Manufacturing — were shared to show how the agencies’ work has helped them.

The second week of November, 60 people will begin taking maintenance classes through Vincennes University at the learning center.

A year was spent getting local industries on board with the in-demand class offering and providing private match dollars. The agencies had federal and state dollars coming in from the Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative grant program, the redevelopment commission contributed local matching dollars and the Community Foundation of Jackson County provided grant dollars to help prepare the space at the learning center.

Aisin, Cummins and Valeo agreed to provide initial financial support for the classes, spread out over the next three years.

Davis said they also have been in contact with some other companies that are interested in sending their workers through the classes.

“This wasn’t something that Jackie (Hill with JCIDC Workforce Partnership), Jim or I just cooked up,” he said. “It’s what industry told us they needed, and we’ve gone through the steps to make it become a reality, and bringing Vincennes to the community is a real positive step, a real positive result of this seven-year partnership between the redevelopment commission and our agencies.”

For the second round of funding from the redevelopment commission, Davis said they suggest $850,000 from TIF dollars over a five-year period for Workforce Partnership’s work and $600,000 from certified tech park dollars to stay with the education coalition and learning center.

“Our idea on that is that it would free up more TIF dollar money for you guys to use,” Davis told the commission. “I know you’re funding other good programs as well as ours. … Using this two-prong approach could leave some more money on the table for those TIF dollar requests going forward.”

The technology fund was established when Seymour was granted a certified technology park in 2012 as a result of Cummins’ Hedgehog project. The 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.

Commission member Tim Hardin asked Davis how many people from local industries are being sent through programs at the learning center and how many people from the community are using the facility.

Davis said Ivy Tech Community College students use the facility, and employees from local companies come there for various training classes, but the number of people isn’t tracked.

“We could work on trying to collect that data,” Davis said. “I can tell you that companies are beefing up again. They are training out at the learning center and renting the training space more often, so those numbers are starting to trend back up from the pitfall that we took during COVID.”

After commission President Mark Dennis asked if anyone in the audience wanted to speak in favor of the request, Plump stepped forward and mentioned JCIDC executive committee members Kevin Gabbard and Marvin Veatch also were there in support of it, and he noted the maintenance classes starting soon at the learning center.

Commission Vice President Nate Tormoehlen then made a motion to approve the request, which totaled $1,450,000, noting the commission will figure out where the funding will come from in terms of TIF and certified tech park funds. Hardin seconded, and it was unanimously approved.

“Thank you for all of the information and hard work,” Dennis said to Davis.

“Thank you very much,” Davis said. “We really appreciate your support.”