Board Eyes More County Contracts for Women, Minorities

Janet Duggan's Chappaqua firm has spent some 30 years offering strategic planning and project management services to global corporate giants and local nonprofits, while in Bedford, the 15-year-old firm of Carol J.W. Kurth has won numerous professional honors for its architecture and interior design of homes and business spaces.

Kurth has never pursued county contracts, while Duggan is awaiting word on her first response to a request for quotations from a group including Westchester. The two are among owners of minority and women business enterprises, or MWBEs, who could find it easier to learn about future county contract opportunities, under a proposal Westchester lawmakers are expected to consider this fall.

County Board Chairman Ken Jenkins (D-Yonkers) and six Democratic colleagues have proposed that Westchester expand how it promotes bid solicitations to MWBEs, with the goal of reversing a recent slide in the percentage of women- and minority-owned businesses awarded county contracts.

The proposal would require that for all county contracts of more than $20,000, in addition to advertising in the New York State Contract Reporter:

• Notice shall be sent to all state-certified MWBE vendors, community-based organizations, MWBE business associations located in Westchester, and "qualified" businesses on the county's MWBE list.

• Advertisements should be sent "in a timely fashion" allowing MWBEs to have at least 15 business days in advance of the response date.

• Ads should be placed in media outlets focused on women and minorities.

"We're not trying to do anything other than make sure that we have a level playing field that increases the competition that gives everyone an equal shot at being able to give us the best prices possible. We want quality work, but we want it at the least cost as possible for our taxpayers," Jenkins told Patch.

Joining Jenkins in making the proposal are Vice Chairman Lyndon Williams (D-Mount Vernon), Majority Whip Judy Myers (D-Larchmont), and legislators José Alvarado (D-Yonkers), Peter Harckham (D-Katonah), William Ryan (D-White Plains), and Alfreda Williams (D-Greenburgh).

Duggan agrees Jenkins' proposal is "a good first step," but says the measure should go beyond setting goals: "I think there should be a quarterly report posted on their website to show the progress that they're making. I think that's how you'll achieve success.

Starting with the firm's first project in 1980, the relocation of Citigroup's asset-based finance group from New York City to Harrison, Duggan's firm has carried out interior projects for the financial services giant that include offices, a customer service operations center, and investment banking and trading floor spaces. Duggan's project list includes the Kathleen Allen Lower School at the Hackley School in Tarrytown; and housing for the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry.

Earlier this summer, Duggan's firm answered a request for quotations on behalf of the Westchester/Putnam Workforce Investment Board for a "green" project manager to manage and supervise the Hudson Valley Green Talent Pipeline Program. Deadline for responses was Aug. 16. "We've responded. We haven't heard yet," said Duggan, president of Janet R. Duggan & Associates, Inc.

Kurth, principal/architect with The Office of Carol J. W. Kurth, AIA, Architect, p.c., noted that while she gets alerts of upcoming county and regional contract opportunities, "most of the ones I've seen don't apply to my business" since they involve procurement of supplies and materials rather than her area of interest, architectural services.

As a result, Kurth said, she has never responded to a county contract bid solicitation.

"I would love to be involved in some of the Westchester government buildings and remodel and renovation [projects]," Kurth said. "But if it's something like repair of a roof or repair of asphalt surfaces or remediation type of work, that's not really what I do. My services are much more of a design-oriented scope, or space planning scope, or interior related scope."

She suggested county officials ease the path of new MWBEs seeking contracts — in part through visits to interested businesses — and spell out the category of goods or services for which bids are being sought in the subject lines of future emails, rather than simply trumpeting MWBE opportunities.

Jenkins' proposal has yet to emerge as written legislation. "We basically have the next two months to work on this particular item," Jenkins said, before mid-November when the Board of Legislators focuses on the 2011 budget.

Jenkins said Westchester needed to move beyond best-faith efforts and do more to draw MWBEs. He cited county figures showing declines in the numbers of county contracts awarded to women and minorities between 2008 and last year.

According to Westchester's 2009 Minority and Woman Owned Business Annual Report, minorities won 573 of the 11,166 non-earmarked Westchester County contracts for which they were eligible, 82 fewer than the previous year. Women last year won 548 non-earmarked county contracts, down 67 from 2008.

"The data says there's still not a level playing field," Jenkins said.

Later this year, an IT upgrade will allow Westchester to collect such data electronically from the county's OnBase document management software suite, rather than require employees to input numbers manually. The new system will be in use starting when the county reports such data in 2011, Diane Balistreri, director of community services for Westchester County, told Patch.

"If we can get it up and running by Jan. 1, then we can start collecting the data for '11, and then that report would come out probably in the first quarter of 2012," Balistreri said.

The non-earmarked contracts were among 11,922 contracts awarded by the county last year. The report did not say how much of the county's total $200 million in contracts was awarded to MWBEs.

The cost of the MWBE measure has not been quantified. Jenkins said Westchester would more than recoup expenses in time and record-keeping resulting from his measure through savings expected to emerge as more bidders vie for future contracts.

"We are looking at the proposal to see what is doable" given financial constraints, said Donna Greene, a spokeswoman for County Executive Rob Astorino.

The county staffer who monitored MWBE contract activity under Astorino's predecessor Andrew Spano—Tracy Mitchell, who was director of the county Office of African-American Affairs—has been transferred to the staff of the county Human Rights Commission; her office was abolished. Mitchell's MWBE duties are now handled by Balistreri, who last month took on added duties as director of the county Office for Women.

Jenkins said the move was cause for concern since Balistreri's responsibilities go beyond Mitchell's old job. Balistreri said Westchester remains as committed as ever to encouraging more of the roughly 1,100 businesses registered as MWBEs to bid on county contracts.

In recent years, Balistreri noted, the county created within its website a database of women and minority business owners, as well as businesses interested in working with MWBE partners.

"They've taken very forward steps to be able to match your code and alert you when there are RFPs in your field. The difficulty that I have that my facilities project management [specialty] doesn't have a particular code," Duggan said. "We're registered under consulting because we can do these kinds of management consulting assignments. We're also registered under construction."

While the county has done "a nice job" broadening outreach in recent years, Duggan said it should also hold events that match MWBEs with not only procurement officers, but decision makers in real estate and facilities strategic planning too.

"They could get to know us face to face, which builds some confidence other than being a name on a list. And secondly, it would help us hearing what they're struggling with, so that we could tailor what we as a smaller business could do for them," Duggan added.

Westchester does not require MWBEs to be certified with the state or other third party – though state certification is required for federal contracts or contracts with partial state funding.

Minority and women business owners using the website can find a link to the Hudson Valley Municipal Purchasing Group, which promotes county and local government bidding opportunities in Westchester as well as Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, and Ulster counties. Notices of county contracts appear in legal ads published in The Journal News and WestWorks.

"There are opportunities out there, and opportunities presented. You have to be a go-getter. You have to be a real entrepreneur and stay on top of things like registering, and in some instances, getting certified by the state," Balistreri said.

This year and last, Westchester has also teamed up with the Women's Enterprise Development Center to hold workshops designed to familiarize businesses with the county's contract procurement process.

The next workshop, "Networking with General Contractors," takes place Sept. 20 from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm at the board room of 1133 Westchester Ave. in White Plains. The workshop is free; registration is requested.

On Dec. 1, the county and WEDC will hold a half-day MWBE Expo at the Westchester County Center in White Plains.

"While many businesses and corporations are cutting back, government for the most part continues to purchase products and services from the private sector," Anne Janiak, WEDC's executive director, told Patch. "Therefore, I think it is important for the county to maintain its support for initiatives that help to create awareness and promote business opportunities for MWBEs."