03-27-18 MBE/WBE - Laserfiche WebLink

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Federal, State and Local law. There are two (2) things to note out of that statement. First, the legislative intent of the Ordinance and secondly the legal compliance. We need to make sure what we are doing is in compliance with all three(3)levels of government.The second point is to review and make recommendations to the City's Inclusive Procurement Plan during the Annual Review of Effectiveness to eliminate barriers of participation.The third point is just any other collaborative opportunities that become apparent as we review the plan and as things unfold. Tim Scott arrived at the meeting at 4:33 p.m. Ms.Brooks continued,I would next like to give a quick overview of the 2017 Diversity Purchasing Report. Last year,the City spent a little over$101 million in procurement and we did that through 5,715 purchase orders. That is pretty average. Annually, we hover right around 5,000 and 7,500 purchase orders in a given year. So out of that$101 million, $773,120, or,point seven six percent (.76%) were awarded to MBEs. $1.122 million, or one point zero one percent (1.01%) were awarded to WBEs. So, together, that total is about $1.895 million. That was up from last year by point zero six percent (.06%) over last ye . You can definitely tell by those numbers we have some work to do. Out of that amount,we utilized 1,349 vendors and, of those vendors, four(4) of them were Minority-owned businesses, or point two percent (.2%). Twenty (20) were Women- owned businesses. To specify,these are certified Minority-owned and Women-owned businesses. We did find that in the review of the last fiscal year that there are some Minority-owned businesses that are not certified. Even with those uncertified businesses, the numbers are still small. So, that is kind of the starting point for us to improve in the next twelve(12)months. We hope to see some change there. Ms. Brooks went on, In order to accomplish that, there are a couple of things that are involved in the 2018 Diversity Purchasing Plan that include training and outreach, a newsletter, a vendor handbook which is basically an inclusive procurement process. It is an external guide to help people better understand how to do business with the City. An internal process was set in place as well. We wanted to simply it for City buyers and we are in the process of trying to pool some simple tools together for people to understand the process internally, as well. We are looking at having a Departmental Procurement forecast. The Department of Public Works just had an Annual Contractors event where they talked about all the existing projects they have queued. They also talked about future projects that are coming up. I'm happy to say that the attendance for this year's program was amazing. It was almost four (4) times what it was last year. They actually had to move locations because of the number of attendees. It was more gender and ethnically diverse than I had seen before. Ms. White asked, And what do you think contributed to that increase? Mr. Horvath replied, There are still some challenges, especially on the bidding side of things. There are reasons we have certain steps that businesses have to take. It may be red tape and there is certainly some stuff that could be taken down as it may be a barrier for entry. However some of it is financial, some of it is filling out forms, and it is just a lot to look at especially on the bidding side of things. 4