City council committee reviews $8.98 million in workforce and youth grants; vote to be scheduled Wednesday

The Boston City Council Committee on Labor, Workforce, and Economic Development heard details on 11 workforce and youth grants totaling $8,981,031.76 on Monday, Oct. 27, with the committee chair saying he intends to bring the dockets to a full-council vote on Wednesday.

"Today's hearing is on 11 grants totaling $8,981,031.76," Committee Chair Benjamin Weber (District 6) said as he opened the virtual hearing. The package includes federal WIOA (Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act) and Wagner–Peyser funds, state YouthWorks funding and a MassHire one‑stop career‑center allocation, to be administered by the city’s Office of Workforce Development.

Staff framed the grants as operating and program dollars that will be braided into the city’s two MassHire career centers and a set of youth subrecipients. "The funding for YouthWorks comes from the state, from the Commonwealth Corporation," said Katie Galls, director of grants for the Worker Empowerment Cabinet, as she described Boston’s $4.1 million YouthWorks award and the competitive process to select nonprofit partners. Galls said the YouthWorks grant is intended for low‑income youth and young people with barriers to employment, and that the city will use the money to fund subrecipients and centralized supports (a therapist on referral and a staff person to manage eligibility documentation). She said the YouthWorks dollars will serve about 85 young people with this particular grant allocation.

City staff described how other grants will support career‑center operations and individual training vouchers. The career centers ‘‘served a total of almost 16,000 job seekers, including 14,406 unemployed’’ in FY25, Galls said, and the centers…