San Antonio’s sales-tax-funded job training program known as Ready to Work has placed 4,300 people in new careers since it began during the pandemic. But now that its funding source has ended as planned, the program will stop taking new applicants in 2029.
SA Ready to Work began as a plan to address a skills gap and lost jobs as a result of the pandemic. In 2020, an expiring one-eighth of a cent sales tax that was for aquifer protection was reallocated by voters to first fund Ready to Work until 2026 and then change to fund VIA Metropolitan Transit.
Since its inception in 2021, Ready to Work has collected $235 million in that sales tax and will not collect anymore as of Dec. 31 of last year. Ready to Work expects to spend all of that by the year 2030 and hopefully place upwards of 15,000 people in new jobs…