Putting up a practice wall in Kensington are (from left), Anthony Gregory, instructor Willie Warren, Joe Walton, and Paul Abner.
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Stimulus funds finally flowing to weatherization
After getting out of the Army in 2006, Brian Smith kicked around from job to job. He worked as a security guard. He was a retail supervisor. He spent some months at a warehouse. Nothing seemed to last.
Now, Smith is among a small group of veterans who make up the first class of home-weatherization workers to be trained in the Philadelphia region under the federal stimulus act.
He hopes that, this time, the work lasts - maybe even becomes a career.
Nine months after passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, states finally are getting rolling on what was billed as one of the most important stimulus programs: the allotment of $5 billion nationally to train workers for the green economy and put them to work upgrading leaky old homes where heat literally goes out the window.
With a big influx of cash in recent weeks, most states are in position to spend half the weatherization funding they expect to get - $253 million in Pennsylvania, $119 million in New Jersey.
Some stimulus-funded weatherization work has begun. Mayor Nutter and other elected officials plan to talk up the program tomorrow by visiting one of the first houses in Philadelphia to be made more energy-efficient.
But training for most of the workers who will do weatherization is only now getting under way.
Each morning for the last week or so, Smith, 25, of Philadelphia's Mount Airy section, has been reporting to a graffiti-marred warehouse in Kensington that a century and a half ago turned out uniforms for Civil War soldiers.
The building on West Clearfield Street, run by the nonprofit Energy Coordinating Agency of Philadelphia Inc., has been designated one of six training centers across the state. Weatherization agencies from Philadelphia, Bucks, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties will send workers there. Trainees don't have to be veterans.
Smith, rail-thin and just under 6 feet tall, has been unemployed since his last layoff about a year ago.
After graduating from Dobbins Career and Technical High School in 2002, he joined the Army and ended up serving in Afghanistan with the 10th Forward Support Battalion.
"Even though I have a military background," he said, "it's not easy to find a job."
Sounding like a soldier taught to be gung-ho, he said, "I like to receive an opportunity, make the most of it, and then go to the next level."
In work boots and a work uniform, with hard hat and safety glasses, he was standing in a big open area on the second floor of the warehouse. He and a half-dozen other veterans were learning how to build an interior wall - to nail together the studs, to cut and mount the wallboard, to seal it all with caulk.
After lunch, the men headed for a class in construction worker's math - adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions. Two guys in the class had dropped out because of math anxiety.
Back in the 1970s, the federal government instituted a jobs program called CETA, the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act. But there wasn't much training, and when the program ended, the jobs did, too.
Stimulus-funded weatherization is an expansion of a federal program that also dates to the '70s. Smith hopes that what he is learning will lead to a permanent job when stimulus funding ends in 2011, he said.
The belief that the green economy will grow is the reason the Obama administration picked weatherization for a massive boost in funding.
"It will be a great opportunity - not just today, but forever," Smith said.
He and the other veterans are in a special monthlong course to become weatherization installers. The course for most installers is six days.
