09-03-19 MBE/WBE - Laserfiche WebLink

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are cumbersome. Contract size is a m large impediment. We have these large contracts that small p minority and women contractors can't participate in because they haven't built the capacity to do so yet. We need to improve our outreach to small certified firms and make sure they are aware of contracts coming up. It is also important to do capacity building here, making sure our businesses here are supported so they can build up to become prime contractors. She continued, All of the contracts that were analyzed were over $50,000 and they were for contract year 2015, 2016, and 2017, and they were worth about$103 million. Of the two hundred seventy-eight (278) contracts, three hundred twenty-seven (327) subcontracts were valued at a little over$25 million over the three(3) years. That is the dataset that produced the analysis. She went on, In determining our geographic marketplace,the industry standard is to look at where seventy-five percent(75%) of the contracts are coming from. It is determined by zip code and it is collapsed into metropolitan statistical areas. Eighty-one percent (81%) of our spending went to Indiana companies. They identified three (3) counties outside of the State, two (2) in Illinois and one (1) in Michigan, where our other business goes. This means that the whole State of Indiana, and three(3)counties outside of Indiana makes up our geographic marketplace.The list of certified businesses that we've put together, specific to the City of South Bend, has the local MBEs listed. She continued, There are two (2) different topics here. One (1) is building capacity of MBE's locally, and the other is utilizing them for City-funded projects. The two (2) activities ultimately support each other, but there are two (2) different projects. Creating more MBE's here locally is an activity all by itself. A certified MBE means that they have been vetted and found to be a bona fide minority or woman owned business,meaning, if a woman is claiming to own a company, it is actually her that runs it day to day and not her husband, and the same is true for MBEs. They have a very rigorous financial vetting process to make sure they won't go belly up in the middle of a project. There are other local minority owned businesses that we are tracking in the City. This doesn't mean that they can't become certified, but they aren't certified yet. Ms. Brooks explained that some certification agencies require a fee and have a more rigorous process than other agencies that are free. She then summarized the geographic location where the City has been doing business and discussed the high level of specificity of the study. Ms. Brooks stated, The aggregated weighted availability for our geographic marketplace is three point two five percent (3.25%) for Black, point five seven percent (.57%) for Hispanic, one point zero one percent (1.01%) for Asian, point nine two percent(.92) for Native American, nine point one seven percent(9.17%) for white women, and if you collapsed all of these,that's when you get the MWBE, and that is where you get the fourteen point nine one percent (14.91%). For non- MWBE's it is eighty-five-point zero nine percent(85.09%). She continued, The disparity ratio for MBE's is seventy-two point three eight(72.38), eighty-five point one eight (85.18) for white women, eighty point two five (80.25) for MWBE's, non- MWBE's, one hundred three point four six (103.46). In order for these numbers to be significant, they have to be at least eighty percent(80%), anything below that is substantively significant.This means that they have found that there is no other explanation for that number except for