The Don Kell file
Job: Retiring as Workforce One of Butler County division director
Age: 61
Resides: Fairfield
Education: Bachelor’s degree in political science from University of Dayton
FAIRFIELD — Don Kell, division director of Workforce One of Butler County, is doing what the job center would tell its clients to never do—voluntarily leave his job without already having a new one.
Kell feels it’s time to move on from managing the county’s only large-scale job placement agency, funded mostly by the federal Workforce Investment Act. He retired from Workforce One after 20 years on Friday.
His replacement, Adam Jones, half his age, said the agency will lose its institutional knowledge with Kell, the retirement next spring of Career Counselor Barb Carmella and other recent job cuts.
Workforce One provides services to match job seekers and employers, a division of the county Department of Job and Family Services. First-time visits have nearly tripled in the recent recession to 7,987 people last fiscal year. Kell saw the need for the center’s services rise as the county’s unemployment rate in January 2010 reached more than 10 percent.
The unemployment rate is now 7.9 percent, according to Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
“I think we’ve bottomed out, I really do,” Kell said.
As director of Workforce One, Kell manages the center’s people, programs and facilities. Workforce One is a one-stop for services for job seekers with multiple partners for unemployment assistance, General Educational Development testing and adult literacy education under one roof.
“It’s always been a place you could go for multiple needs,” Kell said. “I’ve enjoyed the work even though I’m retiring.”
However, cuts this year at Butler County Department of Job and Family Services included job cuts for six Workforce One employees. Four of those jobs have been replaced.
“We’re the people trying to help the people who got laid off, yet we got laid off,” he said.
Workforce One’s funding also faces cuts. Every year, the agency doesn’t know if it will get the same funding, making it difficult to plan or develop long-term programs, he said.
That drives Kell, a methodical person, nuts. Jones said, for example, the instructions on how to open and close the one-stop is five pages long.
He said Kell may not always say what you want to hear, but he will say what you need to.
“He’s the guy who will always play the devil’s advocate,” Jones said.
Kell, 61, of Fairfield, has worked for county government 20 total years in two different stints. In 1978 he started as the manager of youth programs. He left to work in the private sector of work force development and returned.
He’s most proud of managing the youth programs that put several 100 youth ages 16 to 21 to work at probably 150 different locations in Butler County, such as parks, schools and community centers, he said. Later he helped maybe thousands of disadvantaged adults get occupational training and tuition assistance. From 2000 to 2008, Kell helped run nine straight county job fairs for people of the whole region.
“I know a lot of people got hired as a result of that,” he said.
In 2007 he oversaw the move of Workforce One’s location from Hamilton to its current spot, 4631 Dixie Highway Fairfield.
“It’s going to be very hard when he’s gone,” said Carmella, the counselor, who had her first interview the same day as Kell.
Jones, 31, of Fairfield, comes from his position as manager of Butler County’s call center and is a recently elected Fairfield councilman. Jones started working for Butler County about six years ago as information services coordinator for county Job and Family Services.
Jones said his ultimate goal as new division director is to come up with a way to measure Workforce One’s job creation outcomes — the one-stop now has no way to tell how many people it helps find jobs.
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2551 or clevingston@coxohio.com.
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