The City of Owensboro approved an extension Tuesday allowing Alorica to reach certain goals set forth in a 2016 agreement between the local customer engagement center and the City. At Tuesday’s City Commission meeting, the City approved a year-long extension for Alorica to meet these goals in order to receive “certain economic incentives.”
The original and amended agreements require Alorica to meet certain payroll targets for tax incentives from the City of Owensboro.
The original incentive agreement required that Alorica employee 550 people at $10 an hour with an allowance for 10 percent staff turnover, while the new agreement requires Alorica employee 400 people at $13 an hour with the same !0 percent staff turnover allowance.
These objectives must be met by Jan. 1, 2021, rather than the originally-set date of January 1, 2020, City Manager Nate Pagan confirmed.
“We met with these folks at Alorica, and it seemed like the right thing to do,” said Mayor Tom Watson. “As difficult as it is to find help — especially good help with the employment numbers that we have — it felt like the only right thing to do was to extend them for one year and give them an opportunity to make those numbers at that time.”
When asked by Commissioner Larry Conder as to Alorica’s current employee numbers, Alorica’s Senior Site Director Susan Davis-Boorse told him that, as of Tuesday, Alorica currently had 348 employees working at the Owensboro site.
According to an article published by the Lane Report in September 2016, Alorica originally planned to employee 830 employees in Owensboro, but that employment target hasn’t been met since Alorica laid its roots at the former BB&T location in downtown Owensboro.
At the time of the announcement, Gov. Matt Bevin called Alorica’s Owensboro site a “tremendous economic impact.”
Alorica originally planned to hire 500 employees in the first 12 months of operation and expand to 830 employees in three years’ time.
Alorica provides customer engagement services through voice, online, mobile telephone and social media to companies involved in healthcare, finance, digital services and customer relationship management, according to its website.
