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QUESTION

Council Member Brooks Powers Discusses MWBE Program Diversity Metrics

1:49:39

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3 min

Council Member Brooks Powers probes the Department of Design and Construction (DDC) and Department of Transportation (DOT) on the way they track and improve diversity within the MWBE program, ensuring it reflects the diversity of the city's entrepreneur community. Discussions reveal DDC's pioneering efforts in setting desegregated goals and DOT's commitment to increasing FWB participation, with a focus on underrepresented groups. Both departments detail their strategies for monitoring and addressing utilization gaps across various minority groups.

Speaker 1

1:49:39

Does d does the beauty see keep track of diversity within diversity metrics to ensure that our city's MWBE program reflects the diversity of the city's entrepreneur community.

1:49:50

And how does the CDC plan to improve the situation where the bulk of MWD contract value goes to a few minority groups while women of color and black and brown business owners seem to be left behind.

1:50:05

So

Speaker 4

1:50:08

I wanna share that CDC is really proud.

1:50:10

We were the 1st city agency to desegregate goals.

1:50:13

We've been desegregating I believe, for the last 7 years to target that specific, what we call the disparity within the And the way that we address it is to make sure that we are we are setting goals for African American and Latinx vendors.

1:50:33

That's the way that we target it to make sure that we are addressing that.

1:50:37

And we it's something that we monitor every anytime that we get on a quarterly basis, we get our data from Mox.

1:50:44

And one of the first things that we do is we disaggregated for use based on ethnic ethnic city and gender and race, and so that we can address the utilization gaps.

Speaker 1

1:50:56

Thank you.

1:50:57

For that.

1:50:59

And as we talk about diversity and diversity and we talk about black and brown, I understand that there's also disparity within the Asian category as well has DDC begun to drill into that is also?

Speaker 4

1:51:20

So those are conversations that we've been having.

1:51:22

I think it's much more complicated because for lack of a better word, the category as Asian.

1:51:31

So it's really hard to discern the differences in terms of the vendor ethnicity.

1:51:40

And it's conversations that we've had I mean, personally, I've been having with SBS for the last few years, and it's something that we are trying to figure out how to handle.

Speaker 1

1:51:52

And In particular with DOT, does DOT keep track of diversity within diversity and metrics and is there a plan to have better outreach to the underrepresented categories?

Speaker 13

1:52:09

Yeah.

1:52:10

The the short answer is yes.

1:52:11

Commissioner Rodriguez top priority at DOT has been increasing the number of FWD participation among our contracts.

1:52:19

And That that same issue that you're referencing, council member, is a key part of our work.

1:52:26

Just we have seen trending in the right direction.

1:52:30

Just fiscal year to date, we've seen utilization of about 22% total, which we expect to go up to 30 And among that, about 20% has gone to black owned vendors, 30% to Hispanic, 20% to women.

1:52:47

And 30% to Asian.

1:52:49

So we are seeing sort of an equal amount for these types of contracts year to date.

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Council Member Brooks Powers Delves into MWBE Disparities and Access to Capital