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Community Resource Center staff layoffs draw questions about Workforce Development Board funding and oversight
Summary
Residents and a CRC representative told commissioners the Community Resource Center provides critical services to undocumented residents and criticized the process that led to staff layoffs. Commissioners and staff said the Workforce Development Board awarded the grant and that administrative-cost splits led to the school's withdrawal.
David Morrell, vice president of the HCST Career Development Center Association, told the Hudson County Board of County Commissioners that the Community Resource Center (CRC) provides essential services — including ESL classes, job placement assistance, and bilingual forklift certification — and said he had not seen board members visit the CRC before a decision to eliminate its staff.
"Closing the CRC removes a vital resource for residents who often have nowhere else to run," Morrell said, asking commissioners for fairness, transparency and accountability. He said three employees scheduled interviews with county Health and Human Services had their interviews canceled and described offers and outcomes for laid-off staff.
Commissioners questioned how the Workforce Development Board (WDB) awarded the grant and who now holds the funding. A county administration representative explained the WDB awards grants and that, when the school withdrew, the WDB would need to reassign the award; the administration said the school withdrew because administrative costs did not cover the school's overhead.
In the public back-and-forth, commissioners expressed concern about how grant administration was restructured, noting that splitting administrative funds among several entities can multiply overhead. One commissioner suggested an offline meeting with state labor officials and staff to clarify the WDB and Department of Labor history and said an education committee meeting would be scheduled to examine the matter.
Staff pledged follow-up: a county staff member said they would prepare and deliver a memo to the chair and the education committee documenting the factors that led to the school's withdrawal and the timeline of grant administration changes.
The board did not vote on policy changes at the meeting; commissioners said they would convene committee-level discussions and explore how the WDB-funded programming and administrative allocations should be managed going forward.
