Council to consider renewal of one-stop operator pact 

Springfield’s Public Information & Civic Engagement Office will continue to provide oversight to the seven-county Ozark Region Workforce Development Board if City Council gives the green light at its next meeting on May 16. 

The PIO would serve as the one-stop operator for Greene, Christian, Dallas, Polk, Stone, Taney and Webster counties, with funding of $66,473 from the board. The office first got the contract for one-stop operator oversight in December 2018. 

The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, passed by Congress and signed into law in 2014, provides for a one-stop operator role. 

According to the Department of Labor, the WIOA is intended to help job seekers access employment, education, training and support to succeed in the labor market while matching skilled workers with employers. It aims to align workforce development efforts with the needs of both job seekers and employers while requiring transparency and accountability from public agencies. 

Duties of the one-stop operators include managing daily operations of one-stop centers, adhering to federal and state regulations and reporting to the Workforce Development Board on operations, performance and improvement recommendations. 

Katherine Trombetta, communications coordinator for the city’s Department of Workforce Development, said the Missouri Job Center is a one-stop center housing 17 community partners – including the Department of Social Services, the Springfield Housing Authority, the Ozarks Area Community Action Corp. and Vocational Rehabilitation. 

Trombetta, a Springfield public information employee, would continue to function as the intermediary between WIOA partners and the Job Center through the renewed one-stop operator agreement. She said one of her roles is to develop a memorandum of understanding each year with the partners to make sure there is broad agreement about expectations. 

“It just fits perfectly together with my role in communications as well as in the PIO department,” she said. “When we do have a training opportunity that’s available to our Ozark region, or we have a job fair, it’s a natural fit in the communications role to make sure that all of that is flowing together for our partners and the general public, to serve them in the best way possible.” 

Cora Scott, Springfield’s director of public information and civic engagement, said the arrangement is unusual. 

“I suspect that there aren’t many one-stop operators similar to this, with a full multimedia communications team working in conjunction with a coordinator,” she said. 

Scott said she was hired 10 years ago by then-City Manager Greg Burris, who expanded the role of the PIO director to include a civic engagement component. The move clarified the pivotal nature of communications, according to Scott. 

“To do community engagement for my own community was very appealing to me,” she said. “We are involved in operations a lot more than people know. So much of the success of an operation depends on how well it’s communicated internally and externally.” 

A communications office plays a key role in getting the community involved and also provides feedback on improving operations. 

“Katherine’s role is a little microcosm of how I wish our entire city would function – there’s a lot of coordination and communication,” Scott said. 

But Scott’s staff of 13 full-time communications professionals does carry the load of internal and external communications for 25 departments and 1,400 employees – making the one-stop operator role a natural extension of its functions, she said. 

“Our fist devotion is to citizens and taxpayers, but we’ve got to keep the staff apprised as well,” she said. “The hope is that we have no silos of information – that’s the goal.”