As part of a broader effort to connect people with learning and career opportunities in the trades, Pierce County is giving a $300,000 grant to Clover Park Technical College.
“ I firmly believe that when we're able to help more families be more stable because they have access to careers and jobs that pay the bills, everyone succeeds. And it's a great investment for us when we can play our role,” said Pierce County Executive Ryan Mello.
Mello announced the grant funding during a press conference about his Building Together initiative. The initiative’s intent is to bolster training and make educational opportunities more accessible in the trades, and provide job opportunities for local workers through county public work projects.
The grant money comes from the Puget Sound Taxpayer Accountability Account, which requires Sound Transit to pay a sales and use tax offset fee to King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties up until $518 million has been deposited into the account. The funds can only be used for supporting education. Last year, Clover Park opened a facility called the Eastside Training Center, where students can enroll in programs such as construction technology, electrician and plumbing training, as well as English as a second language classes and high school completion courses.
That facility also offers shorter courses in things like forklift licensing and CPR training, said Lester Burkes, the college’s dean of Automotive and Trades. Burkes said the college plans to use the county grant for scholarships and reduce some short-term course prices.
“ The young people of today, or people who are just thinking about going back to get any type of training, they want to have more guarantees around their outcomes,” he said.
Burkes said Clover Park hopes to impact at least 200 people with the funding, but the college also wants to find ways to sustain more affordable offerings even after the grant dollars run out.
“For us, it's really focused around (and) beyond just the grants. How do we sustain this work that the county has invested in to help us get started?” Burkes said.
The money will also support scholarships in the college’s new lineworker and arboriculture program — a high-need but expensive course.
The new programs have grown quickly. In January 2025, there were four students enrolled at the Eastside Training Center; now there are 400. There are about 40 students currently in the lineworkers program, up from less than 10 when it started.
The county is trying to reach disconnected young adults, people who are not working or in school.
In Pierce County, over 14,000 people between the ages of 16 and 24 are not going to school or working, according to a report from WorkForce Central.
“ It's an astronomical number. It's really shocking. And that's not good for those young people's future. It's not good for our local economy,” Mello said.
Read the audio transcript here.
