The State of Minority- and Women- Owned ... - Cleveland.com

The City of Cleveland’s Cleveland Small Business, Minority Business Enterprise, and
Female Business Enterprise Program: Overview and Feedback Interviews
to the cost of this particular segment of the product and it costs your taxpayers more
money.
7. Waivers of goals
In response to these issues, several participants stated that they had been able to obtain waivers
of goals based upon having made good faith efforts to meet them.
On my Schedule 4 sheet that says why you didn’t meet your goal I say, you got $150,000
worth of [scope of work] but there isn’t a minority in the world that does it [and I
received a waiver].… But why are they putting [an unattainable goal] on there in the first
place?
You try to substitute with another minority firm.
Professional services firms, where the procurement process is qualifications based and therefore
somewhat subjective, were reluctant to seek waivers.
[We don’t seek waivers because] we wanted to have a chance of winning the project.
They say they’re goals … but you have to meet them.
It’s tough sometimes trying to meet those requirements. And so as you pointed out it’s a
goal but you better meet it. So, oftentimes you get people on your team that aren’t
necessarily bringing value to the project but you had to meet a requirement.… You could
end up redoing work.
We tried to get the additional work under the new [10 percent goal] requirement. But they
went back to the City and they said since the original agreement was with 38 [percent
goal], they made us do the 38.…They weren’t willing to waive that.
8. Contract Performance Monitoring and Enforcement
Finally, concerns were raised about how the City monitors and enforces compliance with M/FBE
requirements. M/WBEs and even some non-M/WBEs were concerned about the strength of the
post-award monitoring process.
I’m not sure the City really tracks after the fact.
There’s not enough compliance officers … come out and make sure that what you’re
saying is true and that you’re compliant with what the intention of the program.
[The City should] make a commitment to be more engaged, which means them having
someone inside a particular department who is responsible for that particular project even
on a day-to-day basis if it’s a big enough project.
NERA Economic Consulting 309