The D.C. Council on Tuesday could cut four weeks from Mayor Adrian Fenty’s summer jobs program to keep the price tag in check, even as more than 22,000 youth prepare to start in a few weeks.
An emergency resolution offered by Ward 8 Councilman Marion Barry, and backed by Chairman Vincent Gray, would clip the Summer Youth Employment Program from 10 to six weeks. Under a 10-week schedule, the program is expected to cost the city $46 million, double its original budget.
“The council is acting responsibly,” Barry, who has oversight of the Department of Employment Services, said Monday. “We don’t want these kids to have high expectations expecting to work 10 weeks, and then the money runs out.”
In a letter fired off to Barry on Monday, DOES Director Joseph Walsh said the four-week cut would deny 22,000 youth about 2 million hours of work experience and $300 to $500 apiece in pay, create confusion among participants, and damage relationships with employers. The program starts June 18.
“Your proposed action will leave thousands of District youth, who would otherwise be engaged in constructive activities and gaining valuable work experience, with idle time until school begins in late August,” Walsh wrote.
Fenty overhauled the summer jobs program in the wake of last year’s debacle, when the effort went over budget by about $37 million. Online enrollment went smoothly, Fenty has said, and all 22,076 youth registered as of May 27 had been assigned jobs.
The mayor has proposed emptying the Community Benefit Fund, a pot established as part of the Nationals Park financing act, of its $23.4 million to fully subsidize the summer initiative. Revenues deposited in the fund, under D.C. law, are dedicated to “community area priorities” including job training and “such other projects that the Mayor shall find to be of benefit to any area of the District.”
But council members had earmarked millions of fund dollars for pet projects, including commercial development in Barry’s Ward 8, for McKinley Tech High School, for school-based athletics, and for vague “projects located within the boundaries” of Wards 6 and 7.
“I believe running a six-week program is entirely adequate,” Gray said. “I don’t believe we should take any money from the Community Benefit Fund to do this.”
