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| By Ayo Babatunde Staff Intern SPRINGFIELD The Massachusetts Career Development Institute (MCDI), a vocational and educational training facility, will transition away from receiving a subsidy from the City of Springfield. The official agreement was made earlier this month. According to MCDI's Executive Director, Tim Sneed, the transition will be a major step toward achieving a fully private, non-profit status for the institution. Historically, MCDI functioned as quasi-City department receiving public funds. According to Sneed, the subsidy from the City of Springfield comprised less than 20 percent of MCDI's annual $5 million budget. Over the next four years MCDI will move away from receiving the subsidy, and instead move toward restoring that money through other funding opportunities. Sneed said that separating from the city has been part of MCDI's agenda for the last four years. According to Sneed, one of the challenges MCDI has faced has been an increase in the demand for services. "We have waiting lists for up to one or two months for some of our programs...The need is there. Part of the opportunity for us with the transition is that in order for us to serve additional students we will need to access additional financial resources or collaborations with other entities to provide those services," Sneed said. "The transition to becoming a non-city entity will allow us to become more entrepreneurial in that we will have the flexibility to go after funds that only private entities have access to," he added. Sneed also said that the transition will increase opportunities for MCDI to work with other organizations and educational institutions that have similar missions. He said that these collaborations will strengthen MCDI's role in workforce economic development within the region. "It will be easier to collaborate with us. With city entities there are many restrictions on what you can or cannot do. Now we will have the latitude to negotiate directly with funding sources and organizations through our non-profit arm," he added. Past corruption scandals have contributed to a rocky financial relationship between MCDI and the city of Springfield. Sneed affirmed that those days are behind the institution. "We've gotten past the issues that have plagued MCDI over the past six or seven years. We are moving forward and our staff continues to do good work for the City of Springfield," he said. According to Sneed, MCDI's past financial relationship with the city was never formal. "We've needed to put together a formal agreement in terms of the subsidy we were receiving. The transition has allowed us to formalize our relationship with the city and put that in place as well. Our focus is a move towards becoming a critical component of workforce economic development in Springfield," he explained. MCDI's main campus is located on Wilbraham Avenue in Springfield. The institution serves between 1,100 and 1,200 students every year providing skills training, admissions testing and supportive counseling to ready students for the workforce. |