Those of you who have been on the Board for a while know that I like to headline the Annual Report with a quote that has some relevance to our program year. Well, this year the theme of change is our headline. The change is also significant enough that I feel the need to double up on the quotes.
In addition to the WIOA changes that we have been highlighting for a while now, a new Federal OMB circular detailing new financial reporting guidelines, has created significant reworking of our internal reporting. The changes are specifically aimed at how we report our payroll hours worked, and it has been a difficult learning curve as we implement these new processes.
The WIOA changes have been a bit less difficult to implement, up to now. They have though caused some challenges especially in trying to attract vendors for our youth programs. Our Out of School Youth program is being implemented by our Career Center operator due to the lack of vendors interested in bidding to provide these services. We offered contracts for approximately $300,000 but did not receive any legitimate bids for the funding. Due to the failed bid process we were late in spending down the funds so we will have more funds in the next fiscal year for our Out of School programs.
Other changes brought about by the new WIOA legislation are being rolled out slowly. The WIB does have a WIOA implementation committee that will be dealing with a few issues as we enter the next fiscal year. We will be signing an interim MOU with our mandated partners to start the new FY, and eventually a permanent MOU that will include cost sharing if the state leaders can work out some guidelines. We will also be designing an RFP process for Career Center management. The process will play out over most of the next year and culminate with a career center manager in place on July 1, 2017.
