 from JMP. How do you spell your last name Fred? Eladjou. Eladjou. Thank you so much. You have a floor. My name is Fred. I'm Eladjou. I'm with JMP as a general manager. I'm here to just introduce my company. We've been in business for about 25 years right now. And we've been working for the city as a solve and as a pry for the past 15 years. And that's all I have to introduce my company. Steve, we send the rest. Thank you so much for coming today. Appreciate your kind of thing under three minutes. My name is Steve Spears. I'm a safety coordinator there. And I'm just here to voice some concerns JMP has. They want clarification on the who could attend city hearings. Is there a written policy? Or something that we can get in writing. Because again somebody was not allowed to attend a meeting at the hearing that they had. And also JMP feels that minority owned businesses might not be getting the same treatment as larger corporations. Which makes it harder for JMP to also want to bring in small businesses upside down with them. That's our concern. So during the agenda item we'll be able to dig deeper into those concerns. Thank you for coming. My name is Steve Scott. Steve Scott. Fair contract and coalition but FTC thing. I would like to request that Alvin America and agents be included on the tax dollars should not be used by the city of San Antonio to exclude or discriminate against U.S. We have too long for people like our man and our city management to make sure of this point. Thank you. Thank you so much for comment or heard. Next we will have Keith A. Tony to counsel. Thank you Mr. Chairman. My perspective as a former city councilman in district two is unique. And I can tell you that we want and we need real economic development. Now I'm an old Vietnam veteran. I'm an army guy. And the army says you recruit a soldier but you retain a family. So we the city of San Antonio are great at recruiting businesses. We're great at incentivizing businesses. But what about the businesses that have been here? We've been hiring locally, trained locally. Not just changing our community but transforming our community. Because when you take somebody off the street that otherwise will be on the public door and you give them meaningful employment like she's been doing for years and not just Jane others as well. J.M.P. Pater. That you are transforming our community and therefore our city. So let's help. Let's not be a hindrance. Arbitrary fines like J.M.P. Paving experience. Don't help. They don't help. Making up rules as we go along. Excluding people from meetings. I'm thinking about inclusion. But not the illusion of inclusion. Real inclusion. So we need more people in meetings. And I think I'm probably at my three minutes. Am I good? Oh man. I'm a politician with more time. So we all see what I'm saying. This isn't rocket science. We're all here together. I think we all want the same thing. We really do. So when nobody's at me, I hope in here. Because we all want the same thing. And we love the city and its entirety. Of course, my focus is district two. My focus is district three. I don't say that up front. And I don't think anybody's surprised about that. So let's be more inclusive. Not less inclusive. Let's make sure that in contracting that we represent everybody cheap. That we should seriously endeavor to represent everybody. Have everybody at the table. That's what makes our city great. That's what makes our city unique. That's what we get here. That's why tourists are clamoring to get here. That's why all my relatives in Ohio want to spend their winches in my house. Because this is San Antonio. Not just the weather. So let's make it a reality. Let's live up to the legacy of San Antonio, Texas. Let's say we can do that. We can do that. We can do that. We can do that. Because companies, I love the big companies. Don't get me wrong. We can hire the small, the med wheels of the city. Who just plug along. Let's make it easier. Help us out. If there's inventory that must be held on hand, let's make that clear. Help us get there. She'll do it. We'll do it. We want to work. We just want to work. We just want the city to, the entire city to rise up. But that old thing about rising tide, my grandfather wasn't mentioned to say it all the time. I never knew what he was talking about. Thank you so much. Thank you. Councilman Tony. Your sentiments are well taken. Back as I came in, this meeting this morning, I prayed for a long time. Simply because sometimes I think that when there's any sign of protest that people think that someone's trying to hurt someone, they should always do everything out of love. I appreciate the love that you shared with what you have for our city. And hopefully in today's meeting we can continue that. Next, we have Mr. Rosie Baca from the Fair Contracting Coalition. Hello, my name is Rosie Baca. I'm from San Antonio, Texas. And the reason that I'm here to talk is about J.P. Paving. I came here last year to have a meeting with the city here on the behalf of J.P. Paving. Myself, Mr. Calbert and Andrew Colbeck and we weren't allowed to go to the meeting. And I think we were discriminated because we shouldn't have been sent to another room. We should have all met together. That's why I'm here. I want you guys to know what they did to us. Thank you, Mr. Baca. We will address that a few later. Next we'll have is the founder of the Fair Contracting Coalition and a person who is instrumental in helping to develop the city's diversity action plan that was approved back when Mayor Julian Castro was in office and helped to recognize that we had disparity in contracting and a friend of the city also the person who has led the Fair Contracting Coalition's report card on public agencies. Thank you Mr. Chairman and thank you to the SBAC committee members. First of all, let me commend you as volunteers. Mr. Gonzalez Randy and the rest of this committee you're kind of like we are. We're volunteers and we're here to speak up for the minority business. I just want this SBAC committee to know that the Fair Contracting Coalition has your back. We have a great coalition of about 15 organizations and the group is going to join. I won't take a whole three minutes. I'm going to be brief and to the point I do want to raise the issue about the first of all let me commend the city for taking the fine. I understand that J.P. Paving that the $16,000 fine that it was deleted. Is that correct Fred? It was resolved. That was one of our issues ladies and gentlemen. Let me tell you why and we need to put it on the record. If you have other companies that are behind on their contract J.P. Paving was behind then you don't need to be finding them. It's not right. Especially when they hire 100 people from the community and they're providing beans and potatoes on the table. We don't need to do that. Let's be fair with everybody. Now the other thing with the policy, the city from what I understand has no written policy when it comes to who can attend the meetings. I was highly pissed off that Mr. Frisbee and his team Hansie or whatever his name is and all due respect denied us access to that meeting. We weren't there to be legal people. We were there to watch you and see how you conduct yourself in those meetings toward these agencies. I paid taxes and I should have a right to sit in those meetings. The other issue that we want to bring up to you is this. When Mayor Julian Castro was a mayor of the city in 2012 when we first started the Fair Contracting Gold issue we asked that Asian-Americans and African-Americans be appointed to the Economic Development Foundation Board. Here we are in 2019 still talking about this issue and we ought to be ashamed. We ought to be ashamed because that's our tax dollars. These guys are spending millions of dollars with the Economic Development Foundation. That's why we don't have a lot of economic development in District 5. That's why we don't have a lot of economic development in District 2 in these low-income areas. Of course we'd like to see a toy over in our neighborhoods. Of course we'd like to see a scene over in our neighborhoods. I could be here all day long and tell you what goes on with the power structure of this town. We know more than you think we know about this issue than the economic development foundation. And I'm going to say it and I'm going to say it the way it is here today. I'm going to call it the way it is and I'm going to step on some toes and I'm going to kiss some people off and I hope they get this on the record. There's practicing institutional racism by the Economic Development Foundation Board. Thank you Mr. Calvert. So we're going to now go into our action items. I want to say this. I would also like to say on the record that many of these companies that spoke today reached out to me prior to this meeting. What I have discovered and I've shared with the SBAC members also is that there's a sentiment that when they speak out on these things that we call injustice that they are that they are targets for what we call revival. And so I looked at the spirit of our Cepeda ordinance which is why we are here which is why we have the legitimacy of being why we were appointed by various council members or mayors to be here and that is because the affirmative action program in our city is a target. It's a bullseye. People don't like it when Michael Cinden says in our room that we've achieved 53% participation of small minority women-owned businesses in the city of San Antonio. They hate it. They don't like the commentary, Randy, that when we talked about when we first started this, my first started this journey on this SBAC. I've made no apologies to anybody who's new in here and who doesn't like for me to speak on what I'm speaking about. But I've been doing this since 2011. Eric Castro had the guts to appoint a service disabled veteran. We have to be black and in business to this very committee. Every mayor that I've met with since then has the same problem and that is that we still haven't figured out how to crack the nut on what we call institutional discrimination. If we did, then we wouldn't have to need for this meeting and we wouldn't have a sabato ordinance. So I could be silent at any time I know. I know my appointment to be over tomorrow. I told you that this morning. So I can still come back to be a citizen to be heard. I still can protest with organizations in the streets and I can make it very difficult because I know where these skeletons are. These skeletons that have been buried. So we're going to talk about some of that today. Again, in love we're going to talk about it today. So, thank you all for it again for voicing your concerns. I think one part of what I shared with some of our SBAC members is that there is no protection mechanism within our current sabato ordinance for a small minority women-owned business that feels as though they've talked too much and now all of a sudden they're not getting the contracting opportunities from the city because they spoke up too much. I want this committee to think about maybe establishing a subcommittee that addresses an executive session issues that concern businesses that bring their situations that you've heard this morning to the surface. I think that there needs to be some safeguards in place for these businesses and I think that's something that we can investigate as a committee with the city staff. So, we'll move forward. The first action item is the approval of the February 8th minutes and those minutes were provided to you by our staff. I just add one thing. Sure. So, you can correct me if I'm wrong but for anybody in this room who's a business who feels like they can't speak up against issues for fear of retaliation or fear of discrimination, the city has implemented a non-discrimination ordinance. It's overseen by our office of equity or non-discrimination ordinance. When these issues come up there is an outlet for them to file. I just want to make sure folks know that to take advantage of if they feel they've been discriminated against by someone at the city of San Antonio. Or actually in any other or the business as well. You can file a complaint on any business and this will be the determination whether our agency will actually apply this to them. So, I think that was a great progress to the avenue that the city had in passing that. Okay, so and I don't know if we need to move this into this for the next agenda, but I'd like to see the appointment of the chief equity officer to the aspect committee to be at the meetings because these issues that, some of these issues that we're going to talk about today, I copied that equity office and I think that there's a blind spot where the equity office has never been in these meetings. And so, that solution and the non-discrimination ordinance I understood those were solution sets. However, again, unless you have invaders for policing these issues and that they're here and that they're present, then we will never see a fairer and equitable process. And that's why we have to then make sure that then the equity officer is present. I know that it's a very important position. The position gets paid lots of money. I've read the job description over and over. In fact, I probably would qualify for that position myself because I have the background agent. So we need to make sure that person's here because that's going to be the check and balance and we need to make sure that officer is here and recordable. So that's a point both of us can also make the note that and again, maybe you need to guide us now. Can we assume in the future that that office will be here or does the aspect and have the chief equity officer as a part of the future aspect meeting? I will put the monstanding meetings moving forward and if a conflict arises like today where they couldn't enter the play notice it is our job as city employees to also notify that office if we hear of issues where discriminatory practices exist so we will also pass along in case they're not here so let me go and submit them to the future meetings. I'll add to that that depending on this committee that avenue to make the complaint is there. It's not subject to first coming to any committee or requesting anyone's permission to follow. Okay, thank you so much. Yes, so now we'll go back to the approval of the February 8th meeting minutes. Were there any we'll have a motion to have a briefing? I don't have any changes. Thank you. Thank you, Randy. So it's been moved. Thank you. Are there any questions for the meeting minutes? We'll take the vote all in favor of approving the meeting minutes for February 8th 2019. I'll say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, thank you. Alright, so now we'll add item number four report presentations in the first one of San Antonio Economic Development Foundation. So is anybody from the EDF here? Was the EDF invited? The EDF was invited. EDF declined to come? Why did they decline to come? Yeah, I know, a near email, you asked me to reply back with what their response was so you could read that. Sure. So we invited them back on Tuesday, February 26th and they replied back um, I hope this email finds you well today because except my apologies for the late response to your invitation below because it came some time after. Unfortunately, I'm unavailable to participate in a meeting on March 22nd but I'm pleased to report that I recently provided um, detailed briefings on DWC-2 City Council a few weeks ago to the hearing's request just to get to come to the board. It has made progress in further diversifying representation this past year. I believe these are the ways to engage in additional change of representation in our daily SCD activities. I'll be sure to have my staff provide updates along the way. Thanks for your continued support, Jenna. What's Jenna's position? Jenna is the CEO of the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation on March 19th which was Tuesday evening so I guess my question is February 6th saying that we're going to have a meeting today. I'm sorry. February please. February 22nd um, there's a great deal of time span. The way I look at these meetings even as a volunteer is that unless there's something else that is more pressing it's a personal family matter. I just, and I've always had this issue, I don't understand why somebody can't, they don't encounter they can't show up to have somebody else to sign. How large is the board of the EDM? It's over 30. I don't know. They have a significant board and so no one from that organization could attend. I also asked for copies of their IRS Form 990s. Did they provide those today? Chris, you made their request on Wednesday I believe. I apologize that request we'll go out to them today. Okay, so the IRS Form 990 is what every nonprofit organization provides. In their 990 because I reviewed it, they are listed as classified as a chamber of commerce. We have the issue of chamber of commerce and guess what in this equity issue how much money is the city providing the various chambers of commerce? If the EDF is a large chamber of commerce and it received public taxpayer dollars from the city of San Antonio, Bear County, CPS who are all board participants and I believe because again I wanted to see the 990 and I wanted to be entered into record factually when I'm spreading falsehoods about the EDF but more than half of their dollars that they use for their budget here comes from public dollars. Is that correct? I believe that's correct. That is correct. I'm validated already. It is correct. The EDFs did validate that because Councilman Hall had a meeting with the EDF and actually Mr. Dominguez the director of this department and my follow-up meeting with Councilman Hall indicated that the EDF does receive more than half of its funds from public dollars. With that being said again why I asked for the 990 not to have a legal argument but to clarify on the record that the city of San Antonio has a monitored relationship with the EDF and so when the citizens asked for the EDF to appear today and they chose not to it's not the first time that they've been requested to provide more information and background. Today wasn't going to be a lynching for the EDF if they had shown up we would have been very polite courteous and we would have been able to hear what they had to say about how they were going to move the organization forward. But they've never given me the opportunity to hear their change that they provided to the board. Now the only things that I can say that visibly that I saw on the EDF's website were changes of new past chairs of three chambers of commerce. Namely the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the North Chamber of Commerce. Those are the three chambers that have had a relationship with the EDF where they swapped money and those chambers have been also recipients of city dollars to the city manager's office. So again when we talk about this issue of chambers, fairness, equity, equality and all that stuff I'm pointing out again that there's a problem. I came in today and I looked at this this portfolio of leaders in San Antonio. Now I thumb through it to see and then they had a little section on the international local aspects of who are the leaders in San Antonio. And ladies and gentlemen I didn't see one African-American in this feature. I did see the director of our department here. I did see the EDF. I did see a lot of people who have been pushed as being our leadership of the city but I did not see not one African-American that could be spoken of and so I asked the question of why. I mean in our narrative as a city is our department not saying and pointing out other examples of of who's doing things in this city advancing small minority businesses. I'm saddened when I see again it's this not the EDF it's everything that we do as a culture of our city. The 7th largest city San Antonio is on the what, the list of the most segregated economically segregated cities in America. It starts with organizations like the EDF. It's a shame that they couldn't be here today because they're not doing what taxpayers expect to do with our money. Everybody say our money. It's our money. I got that from you. It's our money. It's not their money. I know they may not want to travel with some of us and Jim Pro shouldn't be practicing this city. That's what I said. I can be very short lived on this committee and I don't care because Jim Pro should not be practicing 2019 more than $600,000 of taxpayer dollars goes to the EDF and yet they can't show it for me. So what did you have to say about the EDF? Yeah, not about the EDF. Just in clarification on the 990 there's several organizations that are required for all money and the Chamber of Commerce is just one of them. So because they found the money they're going to say, they could absolutely need this money. Thank you. We'll still reach out and request that form today. I think that the SBAC does have an opportunity to make some change in this conversation. Whether or not they showed up to this meeting since Mr. Cowell's report since 2011 he has been asking the same question about the integration of the Economic Development Foundation. I did meet with the Economic Development Foundation and I gave them this presentation called Integrated Executive Committee of the SAEDF. I went through their website and I pointed out that not only on the Board but on their paid staff there's not one African American not on the hired staff. They do have a woman from the West Indies but again I said African American that was from the community not one. Yes, you may say Paula Gold Williams is on the EDF Board she doesn't represent business, she represents energy. Paula Gold Williams while a lever she can't tell me as a small minority business owner how to manage my business or what our business community should be doing. To my knowledge she's not a part of the Alamo City Black Chamber the African American Chamber and so again I'm just looking at these little instances and I'm saying we're being shut out and the excuse is that well we have a plan that's what they told me. Look where the change is and actually I'm going to give you all the letter that Bear County Executive Director for their EDD gave me so that way y'all ain't thinking I'm tripping. Because we talked about I want you to leave with facts I want you to leave here thinking Erin is tripping so if if David can write Dear Jenna, I was copied on Mr. Christopher Herring's recent emails to you that makes opportunity to discuss his concerns regarding the ethics composition of the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation this was dated July 17th of last year the county specifically wants to identify a solution for the persistent lack of African American Asian American private sector business representation on the EDF Executive Committee. The county is committed to ensuring all aspects of diversity and inclusion. We strongly encourage you to address Mr. Herring's request identifying and recruiting for inclusion to the SAEDF Executive Committee qualified successful business person from the African American and Asian business communities. Mr. Herring has some concrete ideas about how to best proceed. Please work to meet with him as soon as possible and give me a report on your proposed plan of action signed David Marquez Executive Director now David is on the EDF Board. Have our City Manager been on the Board? Has our new City Manager taken the position on the Board or has this new City Manager not on the Board yet? I don't know whether they've taken the position but the position itself is insidious so by being City Manager it's not, it wasn't the individual who was appointing the position City Manager. I don't know whether Mr. Walsh has actually attended a meeting yet but he has been on the Board when he took the office of City Manager. Thank you for the clarification. So with that being said we have our City staff that is on the SAEDF. That being said we spend millions of dollars to support the activities of the SAEDF. That being said we have an opportunity to communicate our recommendation to the City Manager because he is on the Board representing us in those interests. Right? What is the pleasure of the Board? What questions do you have? Should we have when the EDF attends our meeting? Should we have the City Manager Mr. Walsh be very welcome? It's a great suggestion. Or a representation. I like the initial suggestion because the new City Manager is the new City Manager. Have representation doesn't mean the message gets communicated in the way a marriage should. We've been dealing so long with this. I tell you and you tell Michael in detail. So let's have the City Manager to be invited to the discussion about the SAEDF with the EDF present. I think that would be helpful. Is that your recommendation? That is my recommendation. I think the motion is yours. Okay, so it's in motion probably a second. Any other questions on that motion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, so let the record reflect that the entire SBAC approved that motion. One thing, I think Chris, you have a meeting with Eric and Renee next week to discuss this issue correct? Yes. So I just want to make it clear they've set up some time to meet with the rest prior to this meeting to meet with them on this issue. Is that approach to the entire S&P? You know, if the SBAC wanted to reach out to the City Manager to attend this meeting I think that would be helpful. Now, Mr. Herring, I don't know what the capacity you requested that meeting, whether it was this SBAC chair or whether it was an individual capacity or so let the record reflect that I didn't ask for the meeting with you. The City Manager, he asked for the meeting with me. So to be qualified and qualify me as being the chair of the SBAC or as the Executive Director of Local Chamber or as the past chair of the Texas Association for African-American Chairs of Commerce or as the past chair for the Percy Action Plan of the City of San Antonio Subcommittee. I can't tell you, or even as a founding member of the Fair Contracting Coalition I can't tell you why you wanted to meet with me but I can tell you that that is a very important meeting to where we're going to advance these issues that we're talking about. But we can ask for more capacity but the point being that if it's a meeting with the SBAC then maybe it might be more appropriate for the City Manager to come and meet all of you at an opening or and this past chair and you can do it. Your last chair can tell me what the poll was and I can do that. And even with all the correspondence that I've been sending about the San Antonio Economic Foundation the City Manager has been copied on everything. So it's not like this is a conversation that's hidden, it's a very public conversation. Again I'm very sad to say that we've been in the 7th largest city to have to deal with what is termed as institutional discrimination. Say how do you say that? Well I was the Chief Military Equal Opportunity Officer for the Air Force at Andrews Air Force Base. I was President Bill Clinton's White House Chairman for the Kids One America Initiative race for the Department of Defense. So I know what institutional discrimination is. I called it, I'm calling it what's happening, a foul. This is what it is. I can make a motion that since we have members of the public here that we can move on to some of the items because all of this is part of that. Very good. Alright well, does any other member of the SBAC have any more comments on this one issue? If not then we can certainly move forward. I'll take your suggestions in a friendly way. Let's conserve our time. Alright, so next item on the agenda is to discuss the Medwills on the SA Fire Department contract with Medwills. So who's going to present the background on that? Chief. I can give that information to this one. Good morning to you Mr. Herring and the rest of the board. My name is Carl and I'm the director of the Medwills contract. We've been at some time and I can say that at this point with what I consider to be great success we have gone through some inventory issues that we have resolved although not contractually operated to do so. We have done that. And I think as Mr. Gonzalez said there were great lessons to be learned in our transition from dealing on this contract with what was a manufacturer or a national supplier to a local business. There is a difference. Prior to that when we did that out the quantities that we required to be in stock for 90 days were not quite as important with a larger company. It didn't matter. They stock a lot of items. And we didn't take unfortunately didn't take a lot of care in really looking at those numbers close to the other part that happens is the way that we do business on the EMS side of the house it changes periodically. We find new ways of doing things. We get feedback from our guys in the field and we have to have that communicated on through the down to the procurement process as well too. So I think we've seen some of those things that we are in the process of correcting or doing better. I think that as we move forward we certainly, and since I was talking about the medical supply contract that will be coming out in a few months we as an apartment have broken that down into multiple separate divisions to make it easier for that and then of course the purchasing apartment takes that and moves forward with whatever process that will be used for procurement of that. But what we are doing with it is we are taking more care to have the background and the data to establish the quantities that are required to be on hand to make sure that we don't have an issue like we had before. At this point I can report that as of our last meeting we have taken care of all those issues and I think as we move forward we should see very little if any issues with this because we have corrected this. As far as the MedWheels performance I can't say enough about that they've done a great job in providing what we need on a daily basis. And as she said as well too one of the things I think that over the years we have begun this level of transformation of that one of the positives that I see and certainly a deal with local is in fact that they are right here they are in our backyard. It's hard to keep a local stock which is a 90 day supply for us and that is on top of the stock that we carry as well too. In our business bad things can happen and when they do it's all hands on deck to have that additional supply of medical locally is a good thing for us and we do and it's kind of fit into at least my philosophy is that when we deal with vendors as a department it's not a vendor customer relationship it's a partnership. I think it feeds well into what's going on here as well too when you look at a true partnership the way I look at it is if my vendor succeeds then I succeed and I'm here to do whatever it takes to have the vendor succeed not to make things more difficult for them but to do everything that I can to ensure that they succeed I succeed. And the community does as well too In the business that I'm in what we're talking about lives it's very critical. So as a department that's what we always protect. I think it lends itself the whole local small business piece lends itself to that level of hands on a tight approach where in the past we have dealt with some larger companies where I'm dealing with one right now a local company where we couldn't even get the name of the president because we had those problems we ended up with a regional rep that I'd already dealt with and it's in the past when we've dealt with companies that the owner is accessible makes it a lot easier on us to be able to pick up the phone and call the owner so I've got a problem it's taken care of as opposed to the more corporate that we deal with where it takes time and there's a lot of layers between us and that person that can solve the problem so I would think that in terms of the program utilized here I would call this particular contract a success and it has been a learning process a problem. Mr. Herron was a previous meeting where we were discussing the getting through some of those inventory issues and I think all parties have been very willing to work with and it's just been a good good process does anybody have a question? I guess my question would be Ms. Gonzalez do you concur with what we've just heard do you feel this is a success? I I definitely think that we're moving forward we are keeping it positive at this point I would not say it's a success I would say that it's definitely a work in progress and let me explain the reason why I'm saying this and again it's a lesson to be learned and the reason that I came public about this many of you know that I'm branded for local community many of you know that I've been a champion along with everybody in here to try to create equity not disparity for local companies when that contract was solicited and if you want to equate the volume by line item at the price of that contract the value of that contract was $886,000 men will receive a 90 day supply that came directly from the incumbent that happened to be sold telling procurement the volumes that they have been buying to meet the supplies we got that 90 day supply and 50% of that 90 day supply was not purchased so that that's the lesson that the chief and I are going through so today when you look at the value of that contract and I think it's something that we need to explore if some of these line items have been replaced by a different product instead of that line item being afforded an opportunity for men was to bid it I didn't that line item went to the prime contractor that is located out of Indiana so I think that's an issue that we can start looking again as part of the lessons learned what kind of language are we going to put into the future if there's going to be replacement parts is the company that currently holds the contract have the opportunity the first opportunity to bid on that and not send it to another contract so that now that the chief and I have been working very well and I have to commend the chief because he's so busy and he has sat down with men with numerous times and that's part of the collaboration that's part of the partnership that's a success but that contract value today is probably less than 50% so that the value currently as we've gone back and modified the volumes I'll give an example we have non-invasive blood pressure cops we ever see an EMS technician or fire department they have a defibrillator let's call it a 12 lead defibrillator where that defibrillator has all these different supplies you have cables you have blood pressure cops, capillines filter lines, sensors and they get replaced so every time they get used you need to replace it so one of the products that we work through is the Solftice 0.9 2MQs the volume that I have is 125 but that volume is one of the volumes that we have to adjust so the city purchased 50 and that 125 and I'm still holding 75 so that now now it's going to give me an opportunity see if this is the opportunity the city has given me is that we have all the adjoining cities, shirts you know Alamo Heights so now I'm going to see if I can expand my customer base by reaching out to everybody else I'd like to get the aspect to have some further questions so Mr. I'm going to go ahead and roll out our attorney Mr. Gonzalez I appreciate your input and of course you understand the issue from I think from March 2017 I got a little bit lost can you explain again the issue with the 886 number was it that that number was inflated or it became different when it was broken apart I got lost during that explanation so if you were to look at this contract you've got different line items I maybe we've got about 25 line items there's about 20 different model numbers those model numbers had quantities when the solicitation came out and then we got the pricing against those quantities so when you added the pricing times the quantities the total value of that would have been $86,000 then due to between the contracts period when the contract was with the old company the large locality and transitioning to med wheels the fire department of course secured inventory that would satisfy their needs but which then caused there not to be the demand to spend with med wheels so and maybe even some of the line items not necessarily being used now because there was other technologies in which the department wanted to use so so that's where that opportunity with that contract that we all celebrated has but we also know that and I'd like the chief to talk about this new contract because I'm going to give you that but I want the chief to talk about this new medical supply contract I think it's about $12 million of contracts that I even spoke on that with the finance department about not putting it out so that the big souls of the world can get that but to debundle it and then so also I've been talking with the city staff about say there's four ways in which we're going to do this $12 million then perhaps one of those methods that we can explore is to have a buy board option that targets small minority women businesses that are on buy board so that we can actually see the fulfillment of growing the scale of company that has really lost money in this initial deal and then make it right by giving them a contract that they can fulfill and that's the letter that Mr. Davos gave to the S&P so what was the delta between the 886 and the new contract value we have dramatically decreased the volume dramatically so you try to go back to the manufacturers to take the volume back and they say no so you ate an A inventory that's that same portion so the volumes we modified the volumes they have probably decreased more than 50% except for the original volumes that were anticipated on this contract now that we're aligning the volumes it's less than 50% I would better say it's more like 40% so if I understand what you're saying Craig may have gone wrong but if Zoll had a contract he would have been before the 886 local provider gives the contract it's 443 per ounce the same issues would have applied to the other so the only difference in the two and that's what I was pointing out earlier is that before when we were dealing with a national vendor those stock amounts didn't matter they sell it to everybody so it was really a non-factor for us what I'm saying is that it's moving forward not just us but any other is the care we take in those kind of numbers so the way the city operates is even at that we don't we give an estimated amount of the contract annually in a contract that doesn't mean we are guaranteeing that amount it could be half of that amount we try to be as close as we can with it so what we did in this particular case is we procured from them greater than 90 days stock in order to reduce the stock levels over there and then realign them so that the vendor was not out for the most part of that so we purchased in some cases maybe three years for the stock because it was off that much another thing that goes into this that makes this one unique is that we I think it was about three years ago it's when we went to this particular model but this model came all new accessories as well too so our history of buying was probably based more on a projection of not having to use that particular unit when you talk about taking blood pressures this unit will do that however our medics also carry in their box the old manual way of doing that and it's up to them to decide what they do once we get a piece of equipment we may anticipate that they're going to be using that blood pressure monitor on that unit when in fact they may prefer to put the blood pressure up on themselves and do it themselves but that's the other kind of variable that we deal with so what we've done to try to get through that as well too is that we started out with setting up quarterly meetings and in the last meeting Ms. Gonzalez said we probably don't need to meet face to face but what we're doing is we're tracking those items that are on that contract from a usage standpoint and we're looking at those really constantly but on a quarterly basis we're providing those to Ms. Gonzalez as well too so that we can look at what we're doing so if we see a downturn in using a particular item we can look at why that is and then try to make an adjustment at that point in terms of stock and that can go up or down our guys can start using more blood pressure cuffs and that number could rise on any of those items as well too so that's kind of the background piece of that and how we got there and how we're trying to like I say that we had to do none of that with a vendor that's why I say in my opinion it's very successful because I think the things that we have addressed we have addressed successfully and we continue to work on those and make sure that this contract is successful for all thank you so much our vice here I appreciate your effort in raising these issues and bringing awareness to these issues as well as I appreciate the chief's effort in making this a productive part I just wanted to back down you said that a contract went to a company in Indiana can you kind of elaborate on that well currently the medical supplies contract is worth roughly about 12 million last year the final year of this contract there was an effort by the city of San Antonio not to issue the final year from Portions Health Solutions is out of Indiana and the city wanted to deepen this is the effort for ESPAC and I really want to commend all the work that you guys are doing because it's making a difference so that it was solicited but the way and the manner that it was solicited is going to be highly disadvantageous to the local swingers because one thing that I want to share with you my experience going through that debugging is that a lot of these prime companies do not really have the vested interest of a swingee I was very disappointed when I walked into a meeting that Christopher touched on it that there is favoritism in this now there is certain favorites that might take more of a priority than others so that the way that the contract was solicited was going to be disadvantageous and so from the efforts of ESPAC making a recommendation to finance to reissue that contract not to award that contract because we need to do work and it's very important right now for everybody to be engaged because this contract before it comes out we really need to start having a conversation that a local company can do it as a prime not that the big companies are going to bring in a company just to use it as a pass through because I've seen that happen already so that that's hopefully answered your question Thank you Thank you very much So remember when you the way the city issues fits there's going to be two primary ways and really one primary way in Jane's case and those are typically done through low fit fashions so we cannot restrict they did to a local small minority they cannot be set aside so in her case when that solicitation is let out there's a low fit process and all finance and fire is there now what we do is in ways that was successful and we're learning lessons it wasn't as successful as we wanted it Jane brought this issue to you all every five to six years ago to defundal it it has now been defundal in the pre solicitations of which in those pre solicitations we've even been on different line items so it can almost be defundal in another five ways it was also the first time we were allowed to place subcontracting goals on there which of course prime is ideal 100% but we still see that as a success because it still drives utilization in areas where we never had it and so we're looking at this contract again in the best method to spur a small minority mode of this utilization in coordination with clients Can you read the suggestion I just gave you in regards to the future contract Sure I received this from Chris I think we should exercise the option of having a buy board program to benefit small minority women on business to further success of the sub-beta program in regards to the anticipated medical supply contracts in the city of San Antonio we can use buy boards as a tool as we have other tools in the economic development department I propose to keep in line with fire chiefs express desires to have a company with warehousing capability with best value one that holds current inventory and is at past performance delivering a 98 supply That's kind of how I've been just after going to countless number of meetings with Ms. Gonzalez and you know as the SBAC chair I've been going to a number of meetings with any company who asked just because I feel like that's a part of what I'm supposed to do despite my family saying I get paid for none of this but the truth is it's sacrificial so that's the solution set that I'd like the department to consider we'll enter into the formal record that that's my recommendation may not be the board's recommendation but that's what I'm offering as one way to keep our city safe our fire chief happy and our small minority women on businesses so with that said yes I have a question on the buy board is that mean Jane Curry is one of the vendors well you know if you look at the wording I'm not saying med wheels what I'm saying is on buy boards in general the city does use buy boards for specialty items trucks that are specialized we have a practice we were at what 13% participation of small minority women on businesses and it was a horrible process that we've approved 53% at this point buy boards was the way that they would do this so I'm focused on the fact that while buy boards was the way in which we did this business under the city we didn't have a focus on looking at those buy boards that have a cluster of small minority women on businesses that could benefit by having the direct opportunity to be scaled up within our city we talked about second stage companies so second stage companies is something that I really want the city and ask back to know more about because it's we don't have many tools to help those businesses that have been in the trenches for 10 years and I want to expand and so that was why the EDF piece wasn't important I mean heck we're going out with taxpayer dollars going all around the world and we don't have companies to come here but yet we can't scale up your company here because all of our investment is talking about how we can bring people in outside to make sense of things better I believe the heart and soul of our city is to improve the businesses that we have we have 36,000 small minority women on businesses we know this we need tools desperately buy a board may be a tool we have to explore it and we do and so we can't treat this opportunity as we just look at the A B and C of what's in that sub beta because we know better in other cities Jane you have a buy board contract in Austin is that correct so other cities are tapping into our resource so why won't our city let us have some of the same ways because some of you have excellent companies that deserve focused attention right now it's random when we go to the lowest bid let's look at the best value for some of these things because it's important alright anything else but I do want you to know buy a board is not easy to get in and so why isn't it easy to get in tell the group you have to you need to have a team of time to apply and we bid on the contract I'm sure Jane can explain to you if she does have it we're not going to go back to Jane but I'm saying I asked that question because those companies that do take the time that are excellent I mean they put rigor into it and so when our businesses do that that means that they have the ability to be scaled even further because they're sacrificing to get on those boards you know how hard it is so we're talking about we don't have to have the traditional low-value we've posted workshops and we've been trying to partner with other governmental agencies like I think Coops Mitchell the one on how to get on Coops and better educate that process to the community that's why I think we need to explore that so everybody know how to get into it so would you like to use that as a motion to have five boards to be part of the next SBAC meeting or future SBAC meeting agenda Zupain contract sure, I think we need it I agree we can, you know, we should explore and maybe educate some small business and local business that you can share and go to the next level Hi. Okay, so now we're going to move on to item number letter C review of that TCI doc word process. Okay, can you all hear me okay? Okay good. So I'm going to try to keep this fairly short and sweet. My name is Kelsey Young and I lead the contracts division for Transportation Capital Improvements and we oversee and we solicit and oversee all the construction and construction related contracts for the city with the exception of those who are out on the airport runway. So just to give you a little bit of background too, on average we solicit about 100 solicitations per year and we award on average around 150. So that also includes our JOC program and also our task order program. So what is a job order contract? It's used for renovations and repairs of vertical projects and we competitively procure it with one solicitation and without having all the projects defined we have an idea of some of them but also multiple projects will come up and we use the RFCSP process which allows for us to look at qualifications, past experience, understanding of the JOC including everybody submitting on the same sample project and then we also are able to add 20 sub beta points to this solicitation. So we have been authorized by section 2269 as a government code and by law these contracts may be a maximum of five years, two years based, three years extensions that we use for lower projects are about $40,000. Anything that's over $100,000 has to go back to council for approval. And then the JOC task orders have a similar cycle to all of our projects, just on a smaller scale and as we mentioned we have this available for all city departments to use and most of them do and especially for any type of common projects and then also in anything really urgent like a roof repair or plumbing repairs or something that we really can't wait for this solicitation process. How are JOC's managed and used? We end up with a pool of respondents, I'll go into that a little bit further and then a product is to identify either by TCI or by a client's department and then they coordinate typically with TCI and a JOC is selected for that particular project by a variety of reasons such as the JOC's current workload or the familiarity and expertise with that type of work as well as having any additional search and purity requirements or something like for example if it's out at the airport there's certain badging that sometimes is needed. Then the JOC has the option of whether or not they want to accept that project or if they want to decline it they have too much other stuff going on or they don't feel like that's the project they want to work on. But if they do accept it then they respond with price, schedule, product samples in the middle of it. Then after that both the client's department and the JOC have an opportunity to negotiate a little bit if needed and then after everybody has mutually approved of the particular task order then the project commences they meet if needed for pre-con, review plans and specs, answering questions and so on. We have been doing these JOC's for a while now. The last JOC program was done in 2015 and we had pretty good utilization. 10 JOC's were awarded and we had eight small businesses, six minority on businesses, three women-owned businesses and one African American-owned business. Subcontracting gold is 24% and we have paid out about 52 million dollars on that contract so far and of that a little over 38 million went to Sabeda certified, almost 30 million went to MWBE and almost four million went to AAPE certified. So we're pretty happy with the way that this contract worked out. I have just a couple more. On February 21st 10 JOC's were again awarded by council. We have the big towns actually even a little bit better where we have eight small businesses again but seven of them are minority-owned businesses. Two women-owned businesses and one African American-owned business. We've also increased the subcontracting goal. It's still the same of 24% of MWBE but we have increased it to 4% AAPE. Last time we exceeded our amounts for AAPE subcontracting and we believe that we'll do the same this year. Question for you, here you go. So City Council, I addressed the question about whether or not the city was meeting its aspirational goals and respected. They find in the subcontracting you address that please because when you say that you've been successful I want you to put that in perspective of the aspirational goals that has been shown in the Sabeda study disparity study because y'all made me look like I was a liar on City Council meeting. You did, the department did and so I want you to clarify whether or not we've been ever successful with reaching African American construction goals with TCI. I'll answer that one Kelsey. So at an overall level it is positive to report that it was the first year the city exceeded its aspirational goal for African American-owned businesses 3.1% utilization for 2.8% availability. However in the construction industry we were a hair deficient at 1.8% utilization to 1.9% availability. I just will note that while deficient this was our best year ever. It was almost double the previous year so it shows that the tools we're putting in place and what was amended in the 2016 program is in fact progressing and we're having year-over-year improvement so while we have to continue to strive to meet that we are seeing increases of where we are deficient. And also just to clarify on me this is one solicitation that I'm talking about you know it's 10 contracts so two thousand, well actually two solicitations 2015 and then our current 2019 so it's 10 contracts but it's just it's 10 out of 150 so there's definitely areas where we can improve. How many of the 2019 contracts that were selected out of the 10 there were selected in the previous of previously awarded contracts? I believe it was seven. We have to go back and look at it. Yes we can we can verify that. Councilwoman was a councilwoman at City that asked the question of how do you assign work? Which council member was that? She asked a question. I think of a sign-of-all by Reflex. Yeah so and I think that that that question she asked I'd like to have you come back at the next week to address that because I didn't find that that that response at the record gate was really clear to how y'all assigned the work and whether the work when the work comes it's equitable distribution of it and so forth because we have received complaints that the work has not been equally distributed and and that was something that came up but okay continue. Well and that's one of things that we are going over in here but we can go into that more detail. Okay so and and and on this one who was on the board that determined who was awarding going to be awarded these contracts because the composition of the board is the question I have. Who was on the evaluation committee? That's correct. Okay so the evaluation committee first of all please know it's not a formal board it is an evaluation committee who was brought together based on subject matter expertise and so on and it was a combination of the city manager's office TCI and building and equipment services and the parks departments. Okay so so that's a pretty and was the director of TCI on that contract I believe he was. I'm wrapping the senior was on that he is now our interim director he was not at the time. Okay so so I guess my question is this I also said something to the fact that the process wasn't fair and our mayor I you know I respect he said that he told the black contract that the process was fair. I'm trying to understand where the city manager's office is the top office in our staff is on the evaluation board and you have the TCI director and its department on there and then other departments. How does someone say that a process isn't fair and get someone who is outside of that process to be able to say that process wasn't fair. I was in the Air Force for 20 years and we always had an appeal authority so when you put city manager office on there that's the highest level of appeal so how how do we rectify the situation when the process doesn't have any type of real appeal authority once you once you have the manager and the department determining who they want to pick. And so I would add to that that while the evaluation committee makes the recommendation that is the city council who approves that contract. Okay good so city council this went to the high audit committee. High profile audit right because of the value of the contract and then so again the council member I think it was either courage or Perry said you know we didn't have anyone from the community that came before us to talk about this contract and I've been sitting here we as an SBAC asked to be very much informed on the agenda items that that go before the high audit committee so I took that as a blow because I couldn't respond it was a council member basically chastising the audience for not going to his meeting and then I know that there's two citizens appointed to that that audit committee and they're not members of the SBAC so there's really no continuity between what we discuss here and what that audit committee receives so how do we change that because I do that that those meetings are posted online so those meetings happen every third we requested you're right I'm not looking to to find more work for these volunteers you're right if it's a suggestion made then you know we'll look at it on the staff level but again those meetings are all of those meetings are public meetings and are they attended by the public so again we have already spoken on this issue this committee is asked to be informed aware of the agenda items because when these high audit items go for both and our council representatives who appointed us expect us to know better we're dumb we don't know better we're in the dark it's a blind spot and that's why I'm acting when I'm acting because y'all don't y'all not getting it but when the council starts speaking against us formally making us look like we're incompetent incapable please no it goes back to the staff issue we ask for the information given to us and so that way we can then get to the part of the problem I love your presentation are you have more slides I just have a couple more then it's just task orders we have a similar at similar type of process that are mostly awarded by low-dates and also some of us by CSP's and that's our task order contracts I just wanted to provide a little bit of clarity because they're a little bit different than our JOC projects they're mostly used for horizontal work and and they're competitively procured as well and they vary in size from about 250,000 when we're trying to deep bundle in order to provide some additional opportunity to about 10 million every month some other a little bit over that but that's our average and these ones are all awarded individually so that's one of the main points to understand as opposed to our JOC where we solicit and then we have 10 a pool of 10 so and then the unit pricing is submitted in the contractor's bid but that's it so do y'all have any questions for me I mean it's been provided to you I'm sure that we also get a copy for the Fair Contracting Coalition yes we will copy you could you go back to the other slide it's it depends and so however we solicit it out we typically have an estimate and then most of these we get a little bit and then however amount that bid comes in for then that's awarded to council anything above 50,000 goes to council we do very few informals in TCI so almost everything that we have goes to council and so the awarding individual will be in the amount less than 250,000 no the awarded amount to the individual would be whatever their bid is so if we let's say we have a sidewalks contract for example and our estimate is around a million and the bid comes in and it's one million two hundred fifty thousand we will go ahead and awarded that one hundred two hundred one million two hundred fifty thousand so the only time that there's any other threshold is if we do an RFCSP for this type of horizontal work and we're doing something along those lines then there's a statute where we can't exceed one point five million for something that's a commonplace horizontal project that was I guess I didn't ask it correctly what is the threshold to be awarded so most of arts are done individually almost all of TCI's with the exception of our RFQs some of our RFCSPs and that's about it but all of our low bids are always awarded out to whomever is the lowest bidder not for low bids there are no thresholds for limits anything over fifty thousand we've been it out goes to council because I was telling Michael I thought maybe your question was if our estimates a million and someone is below that are we required to pay millions that well it says awarded individually is it if you're talking about it is not is there an amount like you stated anything more than fifty thousand because yes that's by state statute so anything that's over I don't have discretion to be awarded outside of a council process if it is under fifty we do have the authority but I think what Kelsey is saying their line of work is nothing is fifty thousand dollars typically so other departments do have a number of contracts that are under fifty that may be executed by the city managers office and actually at twenty five thousand dollars of director with the department can approve at fifteen city manager that's by state statute also by all of them yeah so in terms of when you have a job contract contractors they're doing these projects the CCI have a formal evaluation process of conclusion of each of these projects that we evaluate these contracts we have a scorecard process and where and various meetings and so on that is something that we are looking at potentially improving because in this process when one of your thoughts their attention in their degree that I did happy with work that they had done three years ago and that collection of data you know really came out outside of the board or the evaluation process it disturbed me that we would go back to departments and try to figure out you know why we're justifying why you know a certain company didn't make the mark I thought that the sophistication of TCI should have a formal you know folder of evaluation of completed projects that you know job well done or not so in the end there was no form of reference that they could actually put their hands on so I asked for if there was any derogatory information that was contained in this one companies but no but yet we're going to go off and anecdotal information from a project management crew and not have a sophisticated enough process to where we have evaluation at the completion of each project so it keeps y'all honest it keeps the contractor honest it keeps taxpayers feeling good that our money is being spent the right way and as I asked that question because that random stuff don't work and and we do better have a million more questions for you and I'll submit them to to the department and you know I have a lot of questions because again I went back to the objectivity piece if if someone says that this process this scoring was flawed I'm again asking the question who can call a foul a foul in this process because the the city manager's office was on the board so the city manager can't do it so who's gonna do it and and how do we define that in the city policy I don't know I'm just saying that if I was a company that had been on a project and I don't see where the process worked for me then who do I go to? Who do I go to? Okay so you're asking the city council well city council's not staff and the best they can do is go back and say well well you guys you guys recommended it city manager recommended of course but the city manager was on the board. Let me just mention Chairman I fully understand what you're saying there's some issues in between there and I know it's a pretty large policy discussion yesterday there was a similar contract that was not similar but a contract that was awarded that had similar issues similar questions and we've always had the policy and I'll hold it as best as I can what was conveyed by one of our assistant city managers because it's true if a project is going to have a high dollar value or be a high-profile contractor someone from the city manager's office is going to be on that value and that is for in order to have a certain amount of accountability that this was looked at at a high level and then you're going to have the director of the department that's in charge of that contract as well for the same reason after that you're going to get a number of subject matter experts and you know that was the point in contention yesterday that was put off so that's all for the presentation regarding who was the subject matter expert there's some subjectivity in there however when you're dealing with construction work in this town and if you're going to be in a valley where your company cannot be part of the evaluation of course so the next best thing are those that have had the experience doing these things and then you know to that other point which I'm going to fully acknowledge doing business with the city it is kind of a double xor because if you do a great job that's a great reference to have and if you do a bad job that's also a bad you know it works against you but as you were saying let it be what it is and whatever results are from the work experience it shouldn't be counted so just to add the subject matter expert really needs to be someone from outside of the city because if you have a board like or an evaluation like this where everybody's in the city and the city can basically pick who they want based off of and that's what I was saying before the reprisal piece happens during selection processes and there's no way that you can honestly say that there was an outside person who with objective said hey they got a fair shot because you can't we can't at this point what's already happened happened but moving forward we have to validate have a process that does not allow our small minority women on veteran owned businesses to be picked off based off of like or dislike or preference or or whatever because that's irritating and that's that's kind of what i'm saying I saw but again the process worked and it's something that the department's happy with but again we just have to be mindful that this is not easy work. Chairman can I take my city for a moment here and just say beyond those committee members there is an advisory of a person involved and that's usually somebody who's in the city attorney's office as an attorney if I saw something holding on that was more I would definitely have to do it whether it's the city manager's office or any department that being said there are a number of other situations where there are outside members brought in with the understanding that you become part of the process and not be on the on the on board for the validation so that's a valid suggestion. High-value contracts you know I think all deserve that type of level of consideration I mean high-value contracts that's why the council entrusts the staff to be able to do this right and again I'm saying on the record I don't I don't see this last job order contract as being right I don't believe that it had the integrity that I'm looking for in a process the entire US Air Force officer who was a human resources officer who had a lot of experience dealing with the motion boards and all all those things and where we had to have fairness I'm not seeing it within our city's process I'm not gonna lie and I'm not going to sugarcoat it I'm not gonna say it differently we have flaws in the process and as humans you know we can make mistakes I get that but we can't have mistakes happen as a part of the of the system we can eliminate system problems all right let's move on next item is uh Jane I'm sorry I'm sorry I actually shoot you thank you so much so after the last meeting as back we have as back formally requested that we send an email to jnt gaming asking them if they had any personal issues that had product so I had reached out to um as jnt gaming asking them questions and specifically and I'm just going to read out the email this was um almost four days after the SBAC meeting a good afternoon Miss Ashley I'm just following up from the SBAC meeting that you and your colleagues attended after the A at the Central Library for the instructions of the committee would you please provide us your questions in written the response that I received was on February 11th it said thank you for reaching out I do not believe that jnt had any questions we just wanted to make sure that our concerns were maybe I followed up the same day thank you Miss Ashley for your response if there are any other issues that you would like small business office to look into for instance how the rain delays are granted or the fines that were levied for the project delays we would be happy to help the response that we received the same day was no we have all the information and that has been being greatly one of our issues so we forwarded that email to the chair we did please again the agenda item as requested by your motion but that was the best thank you um part of the citizens we've heard several people talk about JP bringing uh and I'll say his name he's here Calvars and the co-back of those eights in Bacca too their hearing and so uh I knew that was an issue I sent email back to TCI's interim director he provided me with his email response I highlighted the fact that he don't have a city policy that's what the director said now let me say this I'm gonna say I'm gonna say it loud and clear when uh small minority women on businesses say this is Roland's business society that he wants to bring Chris to the meeting but that's what he wants there's no way shape or form that the city staff knows if I'm a 1% partner of Roland's business or I may be no relation to Roland's business or I just may be the person who he wants to advocate you know on his behalf because maybe he knows that's my skill set that's his business and so for any department to say that we're gonna cancel and shut down a meeting based off of that director's preference is ridiculous and wrong we live in the United States of America which I think is where we live we do have the right of freedom of speech and we exercise that when we sit down at the table to say exactly what is disturbing us or what isn't so the citizens when they spoke were absolutely right that's why I asked that question formally I'm proud of the director for answering answering the question the right way and so that's really how it should work pre-release meetings hearings feedback to evaluations from from various bid selections all that you know who I bring to the tables my business now if you want to regulate that then let's get the city council to put some form of policy together where we say we're going to censor businesses and I'm sure that's an option because we're in a democracy and disappointed when I heard that and I've been going to meetings let me say this I've been going to meetings with companies so I've been sitting here now thinking to myself as I sit here Randy with these with these departments am I sitting here because I'm the SBAC chair and they respect that or if I wasn't on the SBAC I sat down with these companies would they throw me out too I don't know so when the attorney asked the question well what the pastor you meet with city manager I don't know he asked me just maybe Chris Herron that he wants to meet with with no titles so I don't know all I'm saying is that the staff can't make the assumption on things like this anymore so now on the record we have the information unless I'm going to be corrected and move forward and that's the truth the issues with jmp paving those are questions with the SBAC asked so are there is any issues that y'all have that you want to address because I'm done talking about jpave but I do know that when I heard about the fine and I asked a question whether or not other companies had also been late yes other companies they have they even find out so then what's a disparity in treatment right is it because it's an Hispanic business I don't know he's wildly successful now maybe there's some I don't know how jealousy works within the staff I don't know how envy works but I know that it's dangerous so anything anybody wants to say we can move on yes TCI yes so I think um when the comments are made they're concerning to us and so I think it would be beneficial if we sat down and discuss them in person and you know for example if if you were told not to work because of rain and then you saw another contractor working I would want to know those details so we can address it and so my intent is to reach out to should I reach out to Ashley jealous Rosa yes okay to arrange something so we can sit down and have those conversations I think that's important if they're being made we need to address them three of us we want there to say anything we just want to see how the city attorney's office and the tci office what they were saying their body language and how they treat the people from jim we were there to monitor them where's it I was kicked out to me I'm sorry because I was kicked out of to me so was there an attorney present on either end oh yes there was she's a judge now okay so one of the so one of the I guess what I what I would mention to that is that one of the state law requirement if you're going to bring an attorney to a meeting please notify our office because that in turn requires us to at least have they are they trust us and well you know and and this is not in this particular case but no let's just agree to disagree many folks here you guys always want to implement and say things that are not true you're being very false right now you're a senior attorney what I'm saying is I'm stating the state bar rules what did they know the lawyer was coming to those meetings yeah but they didn't they didn't ask the lawyer they didn't ask the lawyer to be sure you were running off basically the same thing and again Mr. Cowell where I'm going to tell you is what is basically the state bar rules I don't care what's the state law you guys can interpret the rules you can interpret the rules the way I think to clarify what I'm hearing just taxpayer's money TC what I think I'm hearing I think you're saying that everything might have been followed at this meeting and TC was right and they were there and whatnot but future meetings if an attorney's gonna be present just to be notified well that's that was my intent but I am like like I'm saying a lot of times folks can wear many hats but at the same time I think it's it should be incumbent if you're going to bring an attorney to let us know that way we can have staff's representation there as well because I I can empathize with staff sitting down to having an open candy meeting and then having an attorney be on the other end and not really feeling comfortable to answer what we're saying is going one year and after I'm sitting here listening to this this is what he's saying the attorney didn't get kicked out of the meeting I got kicked out of the meeting Rosie Bata got kicked out of the meeting and Andrew Kovac got kicked out of the meeting not the attorney so you're way off base question by chair I guess so my question should be was it an open meeting was it a public meeting and please allow me to finish and the reason is one if it wasn't open meeting I can see your justification if it was a private meeting then I can also see their justification what is private meeting because when you say this is a company was it a close meeting or wasn't it a public it was an administrative here so can I clarify that please because an open meeting in in the texas open meetings act means something completely different means I have to post 72 hours of means that there's going to be members of a government board who actually have authority to make decisions be there other than that there are all the meetings that we have that are business meetings are private meetings now and you know I know that Christy and and Chelsea and Rosie and everyone there are doing their best we have advised against calling that an administrative hearing because that means something different if you're over with an administrative hearing on even through the administrative code is a whole other meeting aside from a private meeting an administrative hearing is governed by statutory law and has requirements and you're required to go that avenue before you take your next step they called out those meetings administrative hearings but actually they're not required to have those meetings at all but they they the department wants to have those meetings with those businesses for the purpose of just getting additional information or addressing issues that might be so the second part of that is to ensure that this not happen what are what could we categorize those means well we'll be best in the benefit of the j&p etc and those who are coming in just enough in observing um uh so if you open the door to get observed well if if Mr Coward said I don't have anything I'm just there to observe and we say okay come on in uh and then a media member says I'm just there to observe um it's difficult to draw the line well in this case JP Paving invited Mr Coward to go with him so I don't want to make seem like Mr Coward was gonna fly on the ball and he decided he wanted to walk in because these folks all came with JP Paving so so that was who they chose that's their team that's and that's what I'm saying again and we're going to cut this city does not determine who walks in the door of the company that's this unless you can give me a policy statement then then and then for all small businesses that are listening you bring who you want to the table that makes you feel comfortable so you could work through the issues appropriately that's it that's common sense let me just say for the record to this as fat boy mr honey more honey reels of JP Paving is a founding member of the Fair Contracting Coalition I risk my case ready so last one okay so I've got a couple questions what was this meeting called well that was a call well at the time what did JP Paving it was an administrative hearing it was called an administrative hearing and was JP Paving called to this hearing or was he was called in for administrative and he called in JP close in for those no is it city the letter is tci yeah tci tci called it in we coordinate with them okay their availability all right and when the when all the parties were there who were called to the meeting was there an attorney from the city there not at the time whenever JP showed up and they had their attorney then we called our attorney to come over and your city attorney came over yes one of the assistant city attorneys okay there was an attorney who's past the bar and all that kind of yes absolutely okay so there was an attorney there president I don't know what his grade was an attorney okay so so Mike at that point in time all the parties that had called the meeting anybody JP showed up with their attorney the city had an attorney there what you know what's the problem the person that called the meeting tci the city of san Antonio they are the ones that suggested that members of the public leave is that correct not present I was present so at this time um I'm the one who wrote the letter and and we typically asked to be notified if anybody else is going to be coming we had the meeting the FCC was there and then we had a discussion on my first we came in on if um we wanted to proceed in the same way let's reschedule since staff have been surprised by that I understand that they walked in with their attorney you weren't notified but you were you solved the problem by having a city attorney there exactly and so what was the reason for having mr calvert and the other people leave what was the reason so our administrative hearings are traditionally and right we have to speak to a little bit more an opportunity for us to have a very candid and free flowing conversation to try to determine whether or not we want to move forward with the contractor we offered at that time if we still wanted to have the FCC there we could postpone and go ahead and regroup have a larger room since we all were a little over crowded in there and be prepared um or if we wanted to move forward that day that's mr calvert and the rest of the FCC were more than welcome to meet with um with my crispy and other staff at that time while we okay so we're kind of in my opinion and i don't know anything about what's going on in there but in my opinion if you need a bigger room you can get a bigger room or if you need to crank up the ac you can crank it up but based on what you're telling me what i think i heard is that this was an administrative hearing and was it per definition or was it not no they call that and and you know what i mean our office had some discussion they call it an administrative rate we could call it anything and what it basically was was an opportunity to discuss it it sounds to me like it was a very subjective terminology and in the case here it's it was a subjective decision to say no this is an administrative hearing we need to forget this you guys can leave because you're not attorneys i just there's a lot of great area here and you know we deal with great area but i think attorneys don't so it's either administrative hearing or it's not so okay so then i don't see a reason i'm not an attorney i can play a great one on television but there was no reason in my opinion that these people should have been actually exactly and chairman i i appreciate that wanting to move on if i made one statement it would be that keep in mind that the city staff is really there and can talk to the points of the contract but i would really as as city attorney's office i stress that they're not there to make policy they're not there to implement policy our policy board is our city council and we implement what they approve and what they what they you know what they what they've looked at so in some of those meetings it's almost like if two contractors are meeting or two folks in a relationship a contractual relationship for me to discuss the contract i think those individuals involved in the contract at that time should be able to have that discussion now if it elevates to the point where you need to bring your lawyer because we're thinking of taking legal action on this after of course bring your attorney we'll let you know that we're going to be there you should be there as well but it's it's again i'm getting the great area between i'm going to allow uh you know this group for that group the media group the councilman i'm going to allow the county commissioner i'm going to allow the governor to attend this meeting i do you want it's it's difficult for staff who serves at this level and you know who they're going to be with you put it puts us in the but as we said but as we said there's no if i want to treat that piece i'd say you're absolutely right there's no policy there are procedures that we follow and and i would ask and i'm going to recommend that up here at tca tci revises that procedure as far as i know this is being reported and this young just stood up and said the reason for the meeting was to have a candid conversation about this issue okay it was called an administrative hearing but it wasn't okay and so with that case clarity is power and we're either going to have a veil of secrecy or we're going to have transparency in this whole thing okay so and i had nothing to do with their business nothing to do with the foundation i'm just the public person who is trying to use a little bit of the great manner and councilman these are citizens and this is what i'm going to tell you this is what gives the city or any administrative body a black eye i spent 15 years as a school board member in the city 10 of those years as the board president and unless the leader of that group i as board president say now in accordance with the texas open meetings at section 551.074 we're going into closed session this is the public's meeting let it i don't know how his presence or her presence now mr kovac's presence would preclude you from having an open and frank discussion i think you're assuming that they would be disruptive and stop that process thank you i'm sorry i just wanted to clarify i wasn't going to say well no i'm just going by what you just said that your the goal was to have an open and frank discussion so whomever decided it sounds like that they decided arbitrarily councilman decided that their presence forget the attorney because that's been notified because you brought your own attorney in you said so they had an attorney they had an attorney so two attorneys were there so that's off the table the fact that these citizens were were excluded i'm going to give a goal in the last word and then we're going to then go to the next so after you speak michael send it will speak just listening to everybody it sounds like it was not adhering to be an informal conference to sort of have a meeting of the minds there's procedural ways if the concern is somebody's going to bring in their attorney and you know lawyer up and perhaps that information that we use against the party whether it be municipality or or different party you know their procedural steps you can take everybody sign a t re for a wait statement where that information can't be used against somebody so you can have a candid frank conversation without kicking anybody out of the room and so i think that might be something helpful in other words let's have this open engage in dialogue none of this information that we exchange here can be used against the police talk let's sit down and talk and that might be a policy consideration that they could use when we're forward you're right uh it just not just up that we wanted to i think it takes it down actually because if it's if it's a t re for a wait you're basically saying you and i are going to talk and we're going to try to hash it out the room but nothing we say can be used against each other at least you know what i'm talking about yeah i know it works i mean it's definitely effective to have those discussions i think the i think we would probably go through 10 of those again if we if we implemented it today well okay i'm going to move on to the next item but whether it's ten a day or whether it's tci who has a thousand work orders in which we don't have an evaluation process to go we got to do the work the city staff has to do the work laziness will never be an excuse of our city we'll grow the city staff before we're going to commit to being lazy we're not doing our jobs michael before part of the next item is the fcc report part it's kind of convenient to see how we're doing this today so i just wanted to give you all a heads up uh almost annually the fcc request entities submit their utilization information of small minority businesses to be scored like a pet basically you get paid for these fees and apps and they're about to release one i believe this month well what we're doing is we're allowing to show the world faith those that were late getting their court party leave extended the time for those that got a failing grade we've allowed them mr city attorney to go back and look at their data and brain data that they did not submit for 2017 so we're being very transparent we're being very fair because we are going to be going to the editorial board of express news the editorial board of santona beings john so we want to be fair civilian to all these tax entities by the way the city of santona received we got a b on the report call but they got all these other little problems by taking people out of me so basically we have i think three or four people board members that have not responded and they have responded since 2016 so the means are trying to hide something the north side independent school district yeah i called them off northeast independent school district utsa did respond this week and we had san Antonio independent school district but the san Antonio independent school district has responded as a matter of fact we just received their data two days ago so out of us 16 different tax support entities we only have maybe three or four that have not come but the main ones that we're going to go out there we're going to embarrass city attorney they're going to get embarrassed north side independent school district has known about this since 2016 i repeat 2016 thank you mr cowell i'd like to appeal our b i think so the purpose of this was a to inform you that this is coming out tc does a very good job at getting media attention on this for the right reasons to make sure other entities are producing results similar to currently what the city's producing which is our record numbers i will be submitting a letter to the fcc about the store not so much protesting the b but it's requesting the future to make sure there is fairness and parity amongst all the entities and i just wanted to inform you that that was going to be submitted no doubt we have issues but i like to think that as a city and we've progressed we're dealing with these nuanced things one by one instead of the overall issue where we were literally at 13 percent utilization just eight years ago so some of the things i'm going to ask in the future evaluations of the store card is just that certifications how folks count people sure they use the certification agency sure i'll only bring it up because allowing someone to misrepresent themselves sure i'm going to be an original business and on 10 percent of the company harder or woman-owned other things is making sure everybody's local i looked up a lot of folks policies and you're allowed to count a chicago minority on business we chicago's great knob we want to help folks here before we start looking out here um some other things uh making sure no double countings happening meaning if someone's a minority and a woman they fall in one bucket totally um and then actually that this actual payments uh being reported instead of awards um that ensures things like in jane's case that's not ideal sure but we are not going to count that contract as the eight hundred and eighty six thousand dollars it's going to count as that whatever she got the fifty percent because that is an error and i shouldn't be getting credit for that extra piece um and through looking through some policies of some organizations i noticed um and the only reason to bring this up is because that's how we're scored we're compared against other people's percentages so if they're inflating them if you will we're graded more negatively and and um what i saw one policy of one organization where it basically said if the contract has fifty one percent of greater minority women on business utilization at the sub-level the entire contract will count as a hundred percent and i if i will not allow that if it's a fifty one percent it's a fifty one percent if it's a ten it's a ten if it's at ninety nine and one percent spot it's at ninety nine and so these are support of the board to actually maybe submit this letter on behalf of myself because i think i'll carry more credibility than i do so that was my reflection now let me just say this first of all and i want to say this in uh credit to the city so you won't think i'm just trying to be there for the city we have told cps energy san Antonio water system university health system bear county to all adopt the city of san antonio's diversity action plan because of the fine job that we did including thousands and thousands with soup tank and members around this table i promote city attorney the city's policies because you actually have the best one from all the agencies in this city and now and then i'm a pretty aggressive one for the state let me just say this let me just say this to you you're all fair in the studio you really since the city public service people give you 40 percent of their money y'all need to be on top of them like why don't i still in them to adopt the policy because guess what they don't have one and they're all over the road if you really want to be a hero with you really need to help your brothers and sisters over at cps energy but we brag let me tell you michael cindy and amanda ranan they get an a in my book because this young man and i say this from about my heart you come to our meetings you give us fairness not like other people who wants to approach the knowledge we've had big agencies i was in a meeting this week with a big agency and i'll tell you who it was it was solace solace one of us to use the same numbers we used back in 2016 we're not doing it our scoring matrix is very very simple it's one in one is two two and two is four it's just like in high school when you get a grade we've kept our scoring matrix very very simple it's not the same scoring matrix soon that we used back in 2016 because people were able to fudge those numbers michael you know what i'm talking about we got but i got a very sharp team mr harry and a lot of people that's on that scoring victory a gentleman by the name of richa costa they do a outstanding job this group needs understand mr city attorney we don't get paid to do this we're all volunteers we're all ratepayers and we've been around for 10 years now with this report card so you guys gotta give us some respect too and it's the only accountability we have but we brag all the time and a lot of the members around this table can tell you i've told the big dogs at cps i've told the big dogs at university health system why don't you call michael send them and let him help you with the policy because you don't have a policy and to conclude on that dc i really appreciate what y'all do to this court card what you're saying right now as part of discussion with all the other entities because of the report card the first time around so what you're doing is allowing us to educate and i thank you for that thank you for i want to say uh filming the move to our next item but um when i think about the report card and it's great i'm also saying again the first line i've had with the edf discussion cps energy is on the edf board city of san Antonio is on the edf board ucsa is on the edf board barricade board taxing entities that sit in the decision making on the edf board and so again when we talk about african-american chamber of commerce is not being able to sit at the table or asian-american chamber of commerce is not being able to sit at the table where they want to impose a ten thousand twenty thousand dollar membership that you have to pay in order to play that's wrong that's my experience that's why i say those leaders that we pay need to be held accountable next topic is uh is the diversity action subcommittee our chair is not available to pass that if y'all don't mind and then so now we're going to go into uh upcoming events and the city has that so on events i just want to give y'all some very unfortunate and sad news um usually amanda reyna would be doing this and amanda reyna is no longer with the economic development department she has received a promotion to support dr colleen bridger who's now ascended from the director of metro health to an assistant city manager so amanda is her executive assistant and that change was made really fast within about three business days to be quite honest so we're going to do our best to continue this effort um i'm not allowed to hire anybody for a few months i'm going to have staff try to split up the responsibilities and duties that being said the opportunities we have on here business opportunities for texans um at el traficado hotel that already happened on tuesday march 19 so we'll correct that that was for the agenda was supposed to be for last friday during spring break i apologize and then there was a hc a mixer we went to on march 20th where we brought all of the different uh departments with us to educate that membership on how to do business with the city so it was very productive chair macamick an announcement yes the fair contract and coalition will be meeting on this and our room starts at 9 59 we will be honoring uh mr richardly al the owner of atlas pain and body he's given us free office space free meeting room free administrative help and so we want to honor him for all the work that he's done and helping check in small minority business so all of you welcome we have a free breakfast and free lunch that's being sponsored by straight line management for that particular event so uh it's going to be an exciting meeting and we're looking forward to the big opportunities that the city's going to be presented to us that day mr hearings one of our speakers and we just have our meetings are very excited thank you we're not we're going to add that to the calendar i'll also submit two items from a global changer of san antonio does not have a relationship with our city formally but we have the third annual contemporary african affairs symposium that will be held at texas state university and then also we have a spring membership reception uh global chamber with the san antonio council for international visitors uh because a lot of state department handholding the people who are coming into our city and we have an invitation to you to attend on april the 10th uh at 6 p.m to 7 30 p.m at the holiday and river walk hotel and in that audience we will have members of visitors from mexico chili columbia dominican republic ecuador guamala through basnia cyprus greece hungary cozevo macedonia romania sirvia slovenia so this is what the global chambers is doing i guess under the radar but we're trying to provide value to our city's uh international economic development plan and this is why again global chamber is not part of the edf we've never been invited to be on their board even though my board members have passed um we want to make sure that we're working with second stage companies because there's really no way to focus on it and that's had the executive director i know we can do that so are there any other calendar items for them for the agenda okay so the next item is what in our future business so we've already added a couple but i would like to see councilman john courage who is the chair of the high audit committee to be invited to talk to us about his committee and and how that works there are also two citizens that are appointed to that that committee and i would like for them to be extended invitation so they can develop a relationship with us yes and then we also uh spike chair of the city of sanitary to be invited to the next meeting we do need to get back to the meat potatoes which is see the department spending status right um because we need to know our city departments are on track with uh our committees and let's open the meeting with that so we can kind of get that like we used to buy boards was also an item that we said that we want to let's put that at the end of the agenda and let's see we also asked we also voted on with the city manager to let's work to see about aligning the local preference and the veterans preference programs that fall under the aspect we took a vote and that vote could be that we wanted to see those ordinances realign to us so we need to have an update on that and then the procurement for preference program update uh i got a an email from norbert from finance and to me the procurement preference program is like what walmart does where they have rollbacks and people like rollbacks when it comes to tv's and stuff when it comes to the sub beta ordinance we don't like rollbacks so we need to have an update to what the procurement preference program at the city is going to do now also for the aspects of knowledge they're going to do a survey for this procurement preference program and i'm gonna say it's i don't care what everyone else thinks out there about the sub beta program because when they came and they asked us as we reduce our points to make it so that they can do what they need to do that to me showed us right there that they're going to use surveys and get away to say well everyone thinks that we should do this as a city and um but we know the heart and soul of what we have made progress on came from the sub beta ordinance that said we have disparity in the marketplace no survey can undo that and we can't let the politics of surveys monkey us around to where we're not able to continue to have justice and freedom for our people yes oh and then also we'd like to have tci to to provide us with some new draft documents in terms of how they're going to evaluate of various projects because we need to see that Michael the survey i just want to make note that city council recently adopted a policy where we have to include our civic engagement when looking at policies and i believe surveying is part of that requirement um so we're adopting to those standards they put before us to implement the last thing i'll work with chris independently i don't think we can get all those things on one agenda so i'll try to work with you to prioritize being potatoes on departmental dashboards is important in my opinion and i know historically those take a little while because there's about 30 to present and each one can have a story right because not everybody's as simple as tci where it's roads and bridges and there's like ample opportunity sometimes it's an animal character and we want to talk about that so just a part of times it's pretty simple we'll work on the next few agendas right here one of the things is um the request from my book that we support the letter that you'll be submitting to fcc uh from so um that's back so we really will endorse all of them just want to make sure that it goes on record that was a request and s-back will be supporting my book uh what's next in a second uh the meeting is now called thank you so much uh and thank you thank you to the s-back thank you for our assistance