Revised City of South Bend Disparity Study Letter

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Filed in Clerks 1 COLETTE H O L T Nov zozo & ASSOCIATES Michael Patton Diversity Compliance Inclusion Officer Office of Diversity & Inclusion City of South Bend 225 West Jefferson Boulevard Suite 140ON South Bend, IN 46601 8 September 2020 Re: Revised City of South Bend Disparity Study Dear Mr. Patton: Attached please find the revised 2020 City of South Bend Disparity Study. The new report contains the revisions to the original 2019 City of South Bend Disparity Study. We describe these below. The changes do not alter the substantive conclusions and recommendations presented in the original report. While we have corrected the availability estimates and reassessed the geographic market area, this does not change our view that the City has a strong basis in evidence that race and gender discrimination impede opportunities for minority and woman firms to obtain City prime contracts and associated subcontracts. This evidentiary basis provides the factual predicate to adopt narrowly tailored race- and gender -conscious remedial measures. This includes setting an overall, annual target for City spending with minority- and woman -owned business enterprises ("M/WBEs") and, where appropriate, establishing narrowly tailored contract specific goals for MA/IBE utilization. It also includes immediately undertaking significant race- and gender -neutral measures to reduce barriers to the participation of all small firms, such as procuring and implementing a robust contract data collection and monitoring system; fully staffing and resourcing the Office of Diversity & Inclusion; providing sufficient resources to the Office of Diversity & Inclusion to fully implement the new program; focusing on prime contract awards; conducting outreach, partnering with other entities to provide technical assistance and supportive services to M/WBEs and small firms; and adopting a small business target market (if permitted under Indiana law). The 2020 Study contains two revisions: a computational error on our part, and a reassessment of the correct geographic market area for City spending. The error was made in forming the Master Business Availability List. This List is an aggregation of three databases: the Final Contract Data File; the Master M/WBE Directory and the Hoovers/Dun & Bradstreet database. The error was made in compiling the last component. In purchasing data from Hoovers/D&B, we identified the proper firms for our analysis. However, at the point of requesting the data download, we neglected to override the website default limit of downloads in order to obtain the total number of firms we desired. Consequently, the Hoovers/D&B portion of the Master Business Availability List was smaller than it should have been. This 16 Carriage Hills • San Antonio, TX 78257 773.255.6844 • colette.holt@mwbelaw.com • mwbelaw.com