Travis County Commssioners Court
July 15, 2003
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Item 17
17 is to consider and take appropriate action on recommendations to improve Travis County policy to promote utilization of historically iewrnd utilized businesses on construction contracts, including, a, adoption of city of Austin's hub goals, especially ethnic-based percentages for construction contracts. B on 17 is establishment of an advisory committee to assist with hub he was. And c is authorization to contract with the law firm of collette holt and associates for advice on additional county actions to improve hub results. And can we take these in the order that we listed them there? We have mr. Mcneely from the african-american contractors association here with us who may want to come forward just in case you have a comment or if there are questions that you would like to address.
>> on page 1 under a there is a look at the background. Did we give the whole court this document or am I the only one that got it? If my office is listening, you have a copy there.
>> [ inaudible ].
>> okay. We have copies down here already from my office. This is just basically a document that indicates the hub statistics for african-american businesses and hispanic businesses overall and also construction all of last year, '02, and for I guess the first six or seven months of this year. Actually, historically, we have always thought at the county that we do the services contracts, but could do a lot better under construction contracts. And the construction contracts are really what were brought to our attention. Now, Travis County has never done a disparity study. The city of Austin has done one. When we were presented with that option we decided that it was better to take that money and create the hub office. At that time that's what we did. At that point we did not have a hub office, and I think now ms. Lopez is the third coordinator, third or fourth, but we created the office and basically it was to try to have an fte who is sole responsibility was to help us promote utilization of hub firms in our community. Construction is a kind of tough area. I know you don't have -- we don't have many african-american construction firms, and we have more, but few, hispanic construction firms, right?
>> that's correct.
>> so this effort really is about us trying to do better. We believe that the city of Austin, which has sort of a race-based sub goals, does much better in what they do, and that is basically to indicate a certain percentage for black firms, certain percentage for hispanic firms, and a there really is a recommendation that we pretty much adopt the city's goals. And in my view we did talk to david, this is doable and we won't suffer numerous lawsuits for the different reasons and I tried to set them out there. City of Austin has doing this for about 10 years. Many of the contractors, if not all of them, are kind of used to being with the city's goals and sub goals, and we think it would be an easy step for us to go ahead and adopt those ourselves. The other thing I have in mind is us doing that and the other two steps for about 12 months on a pilot basis and taking a look at results basically. We're trying to improve the numbers.
>> let me clarify something. You've been using the term goals, and we need to be careful. How we assess our performance ourselves. We're not talking about -- because we're under a program, as the judge said, we never did a disparity study, so we don't have the legal ability without that documentation to take actual race-based mandatory programs. All we can do is the voluntary program that we do now, but the way we assess ourselves in comparing what we think a better result would be is if we could reach these goals, but under a voluntary program.
>> and it would still be voluntary.
>> oh, yeah. We cannot move to anything other than a voluntary program short of meeting the constitutional prohibition -- guidelines and standards, which are sort of past history of discrimination in this district by a body, and two, once you've shown that narrowly tailored to address that.
>> but david, can we say, though, that we would like to have this as a preferred -- whatever the language is? Let's say it 30%, and what that does, it says to staff, let's try to really voluntarily try to reach compliance here with the goal.
>> I think that --
>> we're not going to call it goal.
>> we're not going to put in our specs you've got to meet this requirement, but I think the next thing the judge probably has to discuss on that is that we're trying to get someone to help us now take what we're talking about under a voluntary program and see what we can do to make it most effective in that way and where we have these numbers and how we present them. Right now it doesn't change anything other than how we're grading ourselves. This is what we think would be a great program. If we reached these kind of results under a voluntary program.
>> the best results is when sid or sylvia have been working on the subcontracting. I know on some of the major contractoring contracts you've brought forward, you've been able to get the sub numbers up substantially from what was originally submitted, and somebody won based on low bid.
>> right. And these numbers that you see here that are very low are just with signed. If you look underneath at subcontracting, we did a whole lot better. Currently staff tracks 69 contracts, construction contracts, with an average of four hubs, so that's 236 vendors that they are working with trying to track payment information to see what we're actually doing. And if you look -- this is for a five-year period. We did about 4.2% with black hub subs, and almost 50% with hispanic hub subs. So when you look at the numbers, there's different ways to look at the numbers. And the number for just contracting with prime black contractors and hispanics is historically low. The other thing about the numbers, these goals that we're picking up from the city is they actually went out and did an availability study saying this is the number -- there's just so many black contractors locally that do this work, and so we believe that you should be able to, based on availability, do about 2.5% of your work with black crarts. So contractors. So we didn't have any problems meeting with 2.6% goal compared with a 30% cha goal, which I think judge Biscoe over the years have talked about. There's just not 30% available to do the work. And the other consideration that we always feel pressured by is there's, say, five percent black contractors in town. Well, everybody wants them to business with them. So it's not just us pulling from that pool. It's the city and the state. So that will also have an effect on our numbers. I just wanted to point these things out. I think sylvia and jorge have done a lot of things and since we got jorge that has helped us and will continue to help us. One of the things is that they are now going to all the previous conferences and the preconstruction. So prebid is before contracts are ever awarded. Once that contract is awarded, they go to the preconstruction meeting with the project managers and the buyers and they say, okay, this is what you've committed to. Can you increase that? And we work with it there. But also we work with them during that contract to make sure that they're reporting those numbers to us. So there's a lot of things that sylvia and jorge have been trying to do over the years. There's some letters that they developed that we send out to the contractors. You know, basically here's one that was sent. Do you want to -- go ahead and pass those out. Do you have those? We sent them a letter saying con imratlations -- congratulations being the lowest bidder on the contract. And in reviewing your hub participation forms, we see that you are in fulfillment of good faith efforts, however, our records indicate that you have a past history of not reporting payments. And they've actually listed on the contract that we have with them in the past that they committed to a certain amount of hub payments, and they're either not reporting them to us or they're not making payments. So this is just another way by having two people on staff to work with these people and constantly remind them that this is what they committed to, and we need them to report this information to us. So I want to -- sylvia has a list of some of the things and I think teantded over 32 events last year. Five that we actually sponsored ourselves and got other people to participate with us. They are -- they've attended -- tried to attend every prebid and preconstruction. So there are a lot of things that we're trying to do in-house to also help our numbers.
>> the other issue that has been brought to our attention is that the bonding situation for minority construction companies especially really needs to be looked at from the county side. Judge, if you'll remember, because I think there were people out there who have the experience of working on construction jobs, but they don't have the capability to come up with a bonding requirement to be a prime. And that is something that we could be an advocate on, and especially -- and I think there are some companies over at the city of Austin who are doing that very thing. And I think our purchasing department needs to probably go over and work with them on that particular issue to try to -- that's another way to advocate for the company that has some experience so that they can move up to be prime. And so what would it take for us to do that?
>> well, we are doing that, Commissioner. One of the things in all of the meetings, we tell them about the program at the city that they can be a part of. If they can go to the city and work with the city. The city has a five-year contract which the city basically is subsidizing. It's an eight-million-dollar contract. So we have -- because we don't have similar fund or contracts, we've referred people over to the city to use that service.
>> has there been any tracking, though? That's a real good point.
>> [overlapping speakers].
>> does it mean coming up with additional dollars so that we can advocate for their receiving that bonding ability? What does it take for us?
>> well, if the county wants to commit to funding a similar type contract -- [ inaudible ]
>> it can be any amount of money. I'm going to guess you're saying that it takes eight million with the city of Austin, but a smaller amount?
>> we would have to look into that to see what kind of program we could institute over here and what it would cost us.
>> I think that's the next step that it -- that really calls for the county to enter into because the bonding is what is a difficult barrier for companies that -- to overcome, minority companies to overcome.
>> speaking of next steps, the burden of b is for us to put in place an appropriate advisory committee that will help us not only analyze current situations, but also help us find what steps ought to be taken in the future. And ms. Lopez, in one of the attachments gave us a list of persons or groups that she believes should be represented, and it makes sense to me. What we're trying to do is get people from organizations that are extensively involved, inmattly involved -- intimately involved with this issue so that they won't just be coming to meetings, but will be coming to meetings with an active interest and hopefully will be able to really provide assistance to us in the future if -- as we try to figure out steps we need to take to improve our program. Does that pretty much say it?
>> okay.
>> obviously when you're talking about a volunteer opportunity, you know, you're looking at people's willingness to assume that additional work and the groups that she has mentioned here will do that.
>> judge? You know, I guess I hear what you're saying and listening to what Commissioner Gomez has stated, especially with the bonding requirements that I know is necessary when you're a prime, is there any way that we can maybe track -- I know the subcontractors that we've done business with, but I think as they move to the next level as far as being a prime. I don't know if -- there's no indication here to show where they've come -- because I think it's all engrossed. Here you are in a business and you've been subbing for a while and of course with the proper bonding and proper guidance. And now you are a prime as opposed to being a sub, which is a big difference I think as far as doing business.
>> mr. Davis, your point was very well -- very much on time. There are several of us in town that have done just that, to help subcontractors mature and grow into becoming prime contractors. The Austin subcontractors have grown three companies into general contractors, three subcontracting companies into general contractors. And that after this deal is ongoing, we also participate in activeness such as, judge Biscoe, you know about the community, the property jay initiative, which also has grown companies. So that our efforts are already ongoing and we appreciate the court's attention to that matter because where we get into this more viable companies we can grow in the future. It takes the effort of just -- not just the city, but the county and the state, the university and anyone else, including private industry to grow such companies. And in that process we can address ms. Gomez's concern concerning bonding capabilities. This is where these people get that type of information, that type of maturity.
>> thank you for those comments.
>> just a quick question. [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
>> I understand that, but they have in the contract locked down who their subs were. And if they sub out an ang below firm or something else, that is not --
>> it's not about anybody. That's why I'm trying to keep it non-race-based in terms of our contract enforcement. It's really that -- that tradition you're talking about is an important position and one we have rights on, but it doesn't even depend on if it's race-based. That term is something we're interested in who the sub are for a number of reasons. Including these reasons here. But if they don't comply with those, we believe that we can be heard, so we need to enforce those as best we can. And we'll look at those facts and recommend to you as the case comes up whether that's something that we think is actionable or worthy of action.
>> but certainly if they are subbed out and they didn't meet their goals and we're continuing to award them contracts, that would be an issue I would like to bring up with them at that moment as opposed to find outing that something happened three years ago. Do you have a response on one that you gave us here, the top one?
>> no response?
>> when are you expecting them to respond?
>> today.
>> could you fill me in on this one?
>> to answer your request, Commissioner. That is an issue that we have talked about how we're going to deal with that. But the majority of these is thear just not reporting information to us. And it's really -- I mean, with 239 that we're trying to keep up with the folks and -- it's just a huge resource issue for us. So you call and you ask and that's one of the reasons we would like to hire someone to tell us is there more we can do legally to ensure that they --
>> I'm hopeful that -- [ inaudible ].
>> I hope they're just lagging behind on the report.
>> can I make one comment on that? Substitutions I don't see happen a lot. What I really see are that they add more people during the term of the contract, which actually gets me excited. So that's what I look more at and follow the numbers to ensure that they report that because it's wonderful that they say they can do this, but I want more the reports. And we're tracking closer this year that if they do not report it with their invoice, then they get a letter from us saying okay, we know you're busy, this is what we need with invoice number 10, whether it's zero or $500 or 5,000.
>> we don't do the payment if you don't give us the information.
>> move approval of a and b,.
>> second.
>> with the understanding that Commissioner Gomez wanted us to have a committee look at the funding requirements, whether or not they were keeping some firm from working on different projects. She would like to be shown as supportive of the motion.
>> would that also include -- include the tracking mechanism of the firm?
>> yes, sir.
>> this is not to include every specific thing to be done. It's kind of thing -- I don't know that we're actually appointing people, but I think we ought to try to end up with a manageable number of appropriate representatives. And if people show up who bring value, then my recommendation would be for us to welcome them and take advantage of what they have to offer. I think that rather than approving a specific listing of people, basically we're approving the establishment of an appropriate advisory committee to assist with hub efforts, which I'm on -- your point was the tracking?
>> yes. I'm very concerned about that too.
>> looking at the finding and seeing whether or not that's keeping the hubs from working with us. One thing that the advisory committee can look at for us. If there is a problem there, they may recommend specific tepz steps that ought to be taken now is what I'm thinking.
>> okay.
>> and I separate those two out. And c we'll discuss momentarily. Any more discussion of a and b, that motion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. I did separate out c because it's a little different. This person is supposed to be an expert in mbe, wbe issues, which to me has always meant hub issues. I guess it's the same thing. And she had done work with numerous entities nationwide, and also some in this area, including city of Austin, state of Texas, and I list a few others in my memo. She is available to assist with us sometime soon, but she thinks that she could get it done for $55. That's an hourly rate. She has identified $5,500 in her purchasing budget this year, which she can use for the purpose of that. And I request basically -- our request basically is to do just that. We think this is the right person. I don't know this person. As long as we get it done, anybody else would be good.
>> well, let me tell you a couple of things. One is there's been a long tradition in the county attorney's office of approving outside counsel and helping the suggestion and the judge came to me with this person and you're right, this person is a national expert, very well qualified.
>> I don't know this person.
>> and particularly, I talked to some other lawyers that do this type of work here that do this type of work, and particularly usually our office and with other agreements like bond counsel more particularly, we would come and give you a few choices and then y'all would make a pick. But because this one works so closely, it's really a Commissioners court purchasing program specific, I thought it was an acceptable way to go. But I do want to know that I did get at least one call, and in one conversation with some other lawyers here in town, minority lawyers who have pointed out that they do this work as well. And I don't know the details. They may have said -- both of them told me this person is a national expert. They don't have any -- I just passed that on to cyd and wanted to make sure you heard that.
>>
>> and one of the persons that we've been in contact with has been very helpful, his fee was actually about $100 more an hour than hers. So, you know, we did look at the comments that we got, and he acknowledged that she was an expert. He had worked with her before. And he felt she would do a good job and talk to the black contractors association and they have worked with her before and were satisfied with her work. So it is $5,500 and we're required by law to compete it and we did look at the pricing from this other lawyer, so we're getting the best price anyway. And we think we're getting the best person.
>> [inaudible - no mic].
>> it was 25,000.
>> if the majority wants to complete this, I have no problem. Sh she came highly recommended from my staff. I haven't met the person. I did look at all the information that ms. Lopez provided and seeing that she's been real busy and has outstanding qualifications at the same time, if you can get a local person with comparable qualifications, I don't know that comparable qualifications would justify $100 an hour more.
>> if this were a 25,000-dollar or more contract, judge, I would say let's compete it, but this is a small amount, it fits into her schedule and I'm quite satisfied that you have done the due diligence.
>> [inaudible - no mic].
>> we're trying to piggyback the good things they do.
>> it might be net noois to get an outside view.
>> with that I move approval of c. Any more discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Show Commissioner Gomez and Davis voting as indicated. Thank you very much.
Last Modified: Wednesday, July 16, 2003 11:52 AM