City to increase number of contracts with minority- and women-owned businesses

Posted

The Long Beach City Council unanimously voted to establish goals that focus on increasing participation for Minority- and Women-owned Business Enterprises in city contracts during the elected body’s Sept. 20 meeting.

An MWBE is defined as a business, which is owned, operated and controlled consistently by at least 51 percent of women or minority members, and has been certified by the New York State Empire State Development’s Division of Minority and Women’s Business Development.

The legislation cements the city’s goal to hire such businesses 10 percent of the time when procuring construction, maintenance or repair services valued at $250,000 or more, beginning January 1 of next year. The new policy is modeled after existing programs in New York State, according to the city, as Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently increased his goal to hire MWBEs for 30 percent of all government contracts last year, but is among the first of its kind among municipalities in Nassau County.

“I’m just very pleased and proud with respect to our vision as a city,” Councilwoman Anissa Moore said during the vote. “I believe that ultimately this will be a model for other municipalities, and as we move forward to promote women and minority businesses, I think this will ultimately shape transformative as well as economic development for Long Beach, as well as Nassau County.”

Meeting attendees praised the council for considering and passing the measure, including Dewey Smalls, co-chair of Freeport’s New York Rising Community Reconstruction Plan Planning Committee, who said he has been supporting MWBEs for much of his life.

“It has always been a struggle for MWBEs to participate because they are not recognized or accepted as worthy organizations that can do the job. They are,” Smalls said. “For this city to step up like you are is impressive.”

Shelley Brazley, interim executive director of Nassau County’s Office of Minority Affairs, called the measure an “extremely bold step,” and offered at the meeting to work with the city to build capacity with the minority and women-owned businesses in order to put them in a better position to bid for the contracts.

“It is an effort to level the playing field, and you can only help your community grow,” Brazley said, “because certainly if you help small businesses grow, then your local economy will do well.”

Moore said ever since being elected to the council nine months ago, she has pushed the city to include more minorities and women in the bidding process, and now her role is to work with its departments to get information out there about the existing MWBEs. According to New York State’s MWBE Directory, there are 9,032 certified MWBE firms, including 10 with Long Beach addresses. Nassau County currently has 395 certified firms, with two in Long Beach.

She added that the city wanted to start with contracts for upcoming larger projects — including those as part of the city’s revitalization initiative — and that the 10 percent goal is a good first step.

“At this time we just wanted to get something started, but it’s our goal to really work on the entire procurement policy,” Moore told the Herald after the meeting. “We felt that in terms of the large projects, especially in light of the fact that our city right now is going through transition and the large projects are really our focus now, that this would be a tremendous undertaking to say we want to really give opportunity to those individuals.”