Aurora, CO: To address the shortage of automotive technicians, the dealership and repair shop managers along Havana Street, known as the Havana Motor Mile, worked with Aurora’s Pickens Technical College’s Automotive Technician Program to create a tool incentive program. The Havana Motor Mile contributed $20,000 to purchase tool packages for this program. Pickens instructors, Rolf Werner and Ed Martin, worked with Snap-On Tools to leverage those funds to purchase eight tool packages with a value of $6,200 each for this new program.
Auto technicians are required to have their own tools to use on the job. Tools are expensive and often pose a barrier to employment when the newly graduated tech cannot afford to purchase tools of their own right after graduation.
This year, the tool incentive program will award eight top Pickens Tech students a Snap-On Tools package when they are hired to work in a Havana Motor Mile shop. If the student stays on the job for two years at the shop, they get to keep the Snap-On Tool package. If they leave employment before the two year mark, the tool package goes back to Pickens to be awarded to a future student employed in a Havana Motor Mile Shop.
The first four selected for this tool incentive program were announced the evening of May 4 at the annual Occupational Advisory Committee Meeting at Pickens Tech. (Pictured left to right):
Several other students are completing internships in shops along Havana and we will be announcing the names of the other four students selected for this tool incentive program in the near future. More pictures are posted below.
Shop managers from Shortline Automotive Group, Gary’s Full Service Auto Repair, Ed Bozarth Chevrolet, Mike Naughton Ford, Suss Buick GMC, and Tynan’s VW serve on the Havana Motor Mile Auto Technician advisory subcommittee and were instrumental in getting this new program started, along with the help of Havana BID Executive Director, Gayle Jetchick. The Havana Motor Mile is a sub-brand of the Havana Business Improvement District.
