April 29, 9:27 a.m. Correction: SEDA is funding RISE’s first year; SEDA is in talks with Georgia Southern for the childcare study.
Liberty County Development Authority is considering joining a consortium of other development authorities in Coastal Georgia to develop workforce talent and retention. The April 22 meeting was the first meeting for Brynn Grant as the authority’s new chief executive officer.
The Regional Industry Support Enterprise, led by former Bryan development leader Anna Chafin, is a project of the Savannah Economic Development Authority that will focus on eight counties, potentially including Liberty. Chafin says RISE should eventually expand to more counties in the region.
She was joined by Alyce Thornhill, Georgia Department of Economic Development’s regional project manager based in St. Marys, who said Commissioner Pat Wilson is “watching this initiative very closely, because he believes that having located the largest project in the history of the state of Georgia, we now have responsibilities to that…. Not only do we need to find the employees for Hyundai and suppliers, but the bigger piece of that is we need to take care of the people who have called Liberty County home for a long time. And I know that your development authorities have a history of being really good partners with your existing industries. So we feel like this initiative for workforce is going to be something that’s going to not only help our new members of Georgia, but the people who have been here for a long time.”
Chafin said that, after Hyundai announced its metaplant in May 2022, local industries expressed concerns about being able to keep workers. She shared the results of a regional study completed last November by Wadley Donovan Gutshaw, a site selection consulting firm, for the Savannah Joint Development Authority. The company looked at workforce and market conditions within a one-hour-commute radius of the Hyundai metaplant.
The study found an extremely tight labor supply, not only in the region, but nationwide. While demand for certain skills vary each year, she said, technical and production jobs are the toughest to fill. The labor pool will be exhausted by 2025 and there will be about 1,500 more jobs than people to fill them through 2031 unless something is done now.
“But we’re doing something,” Chafin said, adding that SEDA funded RISE through its first year. Of the 20-plus regional counties, eight were selected to join RISE right away, and Liberty County is one of those. The first eight counties should be onboarded by 2025, with the development authorities choosing representatives to serve for four years. It’s possible that counties could renew their membership at that time, she added.
To do that, RISE will facilitate a plan through six working groups addressing the military, underrepresented workers, housing, education (especially K-12, she said), transportation, and marketing.
One of the biggest challenges she cited is that it’s tough to find local talent to fill positions as automotive engineers, machinists, and electricians. RISE is also talking with the 1st District Regional Educational Service Agency, public school systems, Georgia Southern University , Savannah Tech, and Ogeechee Tech, and is in the process of setting up discussions with Savannah State University’s interim president.
While the Savannah region offers businesses and workers a lot in terms of the port and quality of life, she said, the study found some issues that make the area less attractive to job seekers.
Some of the obstacles to meeting local workers’ needs, Chafin explained, are competitive pay, transportation, child care, and air conditioning, as well as affordable housing.
Child care deserts pose a challenge in the region, she said.
“I think we’ve got a two-fold issue here,” Chafin told the board. “One is we have areas where we have a lack of childcare facilities — these are our childcare deserts….And so we need more facilities in certain areas of our regions. But then in other places, we have facilities, but we’re only operating [at] 30% to 50% [capacity], because we don’t have the personnel to support the facility. So this is really creating a challenge for us.”
For that reason, she said, SEDA is in talks with Georgia Southern to conduct a regional study of child care needs “because I’m a big believer in making database decisions. And I think that we need the data in order to know how do we move forward.”
Because a lack of affordable and reliable child care poses a barrier to some workers, she said, “those companies that are either providing on-site child care, or working to partner with other companies for child care options, we think they’re going to differentiate themselves in a very positive way.”
Chatham Area Transit, Coastal Regional Commission Transit, and others will need to be involved in conversations about regional transit, while Georgia Tech is compiling data on affordable housing, which Chafin said will give local governments data they need to make more informed decisions about development.
She emphasized that regional employers have to take a more active role in addressing workforce challenges. For example, she said, employers should start talking to workers about career progression, and that workforce initiatives should target more high school graduates to get into industries, including manufacturing.
Chafin also pointed out that only 40% of troops who leave military service each year are able to find work locally, although 75% of them say they would prefer to stay in the area. She urged tapping that pool of computer-literate, skilled workers, along with their spouses and dependents.
In addition, she said, Liberty County needs to get the K-12 “pipeline” interested in careers that don’t involve college degrees in order to attract prospective businesses.
She pointed to Bowling Green, Kentucky, as a possible model for how to address workforce development needs in Liberty and the surrounding counties. There, the South Central Workforce Development Board covers 10 counties.
Liberty could appoint two members to a 15-member board and take part in the six working groups, an employer best practices forum, a visit to Bowling Green to see how they’ve handled workforce development, staff support for one regional hiring event annually, an event especially for Fort Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield (“just off base in Hinesville”) for troops leaving the service and for their spouses and dependents, a teacher externship (“so they can be better goodwill ambassadors”), marketing campaigns,and a workforce tour of 6 East Coast cities this summer to fill those in-demand technical and production positions.
Other benefits would include social media profiles for existing industries, including short videos highlighting locals; access to a regional job board; help with industry support visits as needed; inclusion in grant applications and future studies (like Georgia Southern’s childcare study); an annual strategic planning session for the work plan, which members would help shape through their presence on the board; and input on lobbying and nonprofit initiatives for education.
The cost, she said, is based on population. Chatham County is the largest, with 50% of the eight-county region’s population, so it gets four seats on the 15-member regional board. Liberty County is one of four mid-tier counties that would get 2 seats. Three smaller counties would get one seat each. RISE would enter into a memorandum of understanding with the county for payment terms.
Chafin did not say which other counties had been invited, nor what the costs for Liberty or counties in the other tiers would be.
To sweeten the pot, Chafin said some company names would be “represented” if LCDA commits by the beginning of May, although counties have until May 31 to join the effort.
“We need a single organization quarterbacking workforce development and placement in the region,” Chafin said.
Should LCDA decide to join RISE, Chafin said, it would benefit from the group’s 501(c)(6) status for lobbying and 501(c)(3) nonprofit status.
The board will vote on whether to join RISE at its next meeting.
Grant took a few minutes to express her gratitude to the board and staff for their help in getting her up to speed.
“I will just say that I’m enjoying the process of really, really diving deeply into what’s happening in Liberty County,” Grant said, and urged the board to tackle “with maybe a little bit more intensity, in particular related to water and sewer in our plan for our county, in our partnership with our other counties. So that’s high, high, high on the list.”
Grant added that she was grateful for Chief Operating Officer Carmen Cole’s and Marketing and Research Director Pat Watkins’ help, and that she was looking forward to getting “this group together for a long term conversation, an off-site of some kind where we are away from our responsibilities, and being pulled away to other meetings… where we can really talk about our vision for our county, our strategic plan for this organization and how we plan to play a role in that vision, what we will do, and then also really looking at our incentive guidelines relative to that plan, where we are today versus where we think we’re going, especially as this region has changed so much in the last year last two years and will continue to change rapidly, I believe, over the three to five years.“
Note: LCDA has changed its monthly meeting time from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. on the fourth Monday of the month.
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