 And item number two, which is the citizens to be heard. Just for introduction, say, I'm Christopher Herring, the chair of the Small Business Advocacy Committee. My name is our vice chair. Actually, for all the citizens who are representing, please tell us who you are. I'm Brady Elgin, I'm representing District 6. Renee Dominguez, I'm the director of the Economic Development Department. Ray Rodriguez, deputy city attorney. I'm the chief genocomotor, I'm software manager. Michael Sinden, I'm the director of Economic Development. I'm also one of the contracts team for transportation. Irene Chavez, representative for District 7. Steve Gonzales, representative of District 9. Su-Fang, District 1. Mike Hall, District 2. I'm Juanique Zipola, District 4. I'd also ask if you could please put your phones on vibrate. So as not to disturb anyone who may be speaking. Okay, the first person that is on the list to be heard, you have three minutes. Tell me my time, keeper. I can do it, I have your name. You got it? Okay, so it'll be Rick Carter. Yes. Good afternoon, and thank you for having me. Thank you, Mr. Herring, for inviting us. My name is Rick Carter. I'm here representing the Fair Contracting Coalition. I'm a mediator. I previously worked at USA, serving under General McDermott as the financial strength committee and our chairman. And so I'm here with some concern with regard to a letter that was dated November the 14th, indicating a change of direction with regard to our small minority and women-owned architectural and engineering firms that they would no longer be included in the diversity contracting standards, as I understand. So I want to make a request to consider reversing that directive. I feel like it's fair to keep all of our small businesses, especially the minority women businesses, on a fair playing field with the larger companies. Financing is available for these companies. The financing is generally based upon what contracts are awarded to those companies. So this is an economic accelerator that is very positive for the city of San Antonio. I'm very impressed with Mr. Combingus and his staff. They do a great job. They engaged Fair Contracting Coalition on a very favorable basis, and I'd like for that to continue. So I appreciate the opportunity to voice my opinion on behalf of small minority women business owners. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Carter. Next person is Sophia Torres from the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. All of this advocacy committee, my name is Sophie Torres, and I'm the Vice President of Governor and Affairs for San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Today I stand before you on behalf of our Board of Directors regarding the changes to this debate of program for architecture and engineering solicitation. Back in 1989, the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce helped create this debate of program as a way to help more small minority women-owned businesses get awarded big contracts from the city of San Antonio. Our environment has been intervaled. We know and understand the need to nurture and cultivate these small minority women-owned businesses to be successful within our city and for our future success. So beta was designed to provide flexibility and to be able to readjust metrics as utilization increases. We also understand that the proven success of this debate is evident with architecture and engineering firms applying these contracts. We are excited to see the success and optimistic will be the new standard for other industries as well due to the program's demonstrated positive results. However, we are concerned that by removing these points, small local businesses may suffer. We urge the city of San Antonio to continue issuing disparity studies in the future to monitor the architecture and engineering category and what effects these changes will have on the percentages of awarded contracts to small minority and women-owned businesses as well to local businesses. We hope the changes to this debate of program for architecture and engineering firms are evaluated on a quarterly basis by the Goal Setting Committee to properly assess the changes in policy and the removal of prime evaluation preference points as well. The assessment should be made public for transparency purposes. Thank you. Thank you. Is the arena secure? That's the J&J solution. Yeah. Well, hello, everyone. My name is Serena Shakir. I am a business owner. I do window cleaning, power washing with my son. I'm a residential commercial and we make it shine the first time. I'm also a member of FCC. But I first want to really thank this committee. I truly do because you get to oversee things. You get to really help us address some issues that might go unresolved. So I just really sincerely thank you all. I'm a recipient of your help and just want to say real quick those preference points help me. I'm a prime now. So you just cannot take that stuff away. And it needs more. Truly more. I'm a prime with the airport. So this program is truly important. So I along with so many others have some real concern. And I really want to address the city spending money with EDF. So my question and my concerns are about the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation. So you don't say this. I don't say this, but EDF says we exist to drive San Antonio economic growth and diversity through recruiting new business. We are helping our local companies stay and grow and bridging the gap between education and industry to build a sustainable workforce pipeline for the community. That's what EDF says. EDF also says the chambers serve as the voice of the business community. Striving to improve the quality of life in the city with business advocates grow while EDF is a marketing and sales organization actively promoting our city to manage the international business. Working to bring new job, producing investment to San Antonio. So if that's their mission, if that's their mission, and if SBAC presented to the city manager, who is a board member along with other public tax pay and entity presented to them on our behalf a solution that they could adopt with regards to black and Asian chamber representation, they chose not to adopt any of those suggestions. That's what I want you to think as this committee because this is important. It's a huge concern to me and not just me. It's a concern to many people in the community, in the black community, Asian community. They're saying they don't want black and Asian chamber representation. We're not allowed. I just want to say, why does the city invest in taxpayer dollars in an organization that excludes black Americans from Asian American chamber representation? Because y'all relate too. Y'all relate too. It's the mayor concerned with this problem because what he says, he's developed a core commitment to civic participation in universal values of liberty, justice and equal opportunity and it doesn't exist. It's not equal opportunity. EDF is receiving our taxpayer dollars, using our taxpayer dollars to help them build with other chambers and their businesses and we have no chamber representation who would use EDF resources to help us bring business and help to our businesses. Thank y'all. Thank you. I'm the principal and owner of Grace Pitchie Design Group. I'm a past D7, SBAC representative and I was on the board for all the work on the disparity study, local preference points on the five-year diversity initiation. At that time I was on the board of San Antonio's Bank Chamber as well and was on the small business committee and was the liaison from SBAC to San Antonio's Bank Chamber. Currently I went swimming for the precinct four and we're launching our disparity study this 2019. The repeal of the local preference points where A&A came to my attention from a letter that was addressed to the engineers via email before Thanksgiving. It was dated November 14th and it was signed by Renee Dominguez and it notified the local preference points would no longer be used in goal setting for upcoming RF2s and RFPs. I contacted the chair, Chris Herring who was unaware of the letter and the executive director of AIA who was totally unaware of the repeal and had not received a letter or briefing from EDD staff. She told me that EDD staff had contacted her on the 8th and 12th saying they needed to meet after hours to give her some information and that they were very vague. Because of the requirement of after hours she could not accommodate. She took the letter I sent her to her leadership and I have said they need to have a board meeting in January to discuss this concerns which brings me to all the outreach that was done all the meetings that we had were undone by a letter that only a select few knew of and participated in briefings which were only the engineers. Regardless of the numbers and the charts and the pies that you're going to show me it is after the fact and an insult to all the people and businesses that gave time and resources to. The ordinance as I understand gives EDD staff the ability to make their own council vote which I believe should be a requirement for transparency. Because of this ability to modify EDD has shown a complete lack of respect to the SBAC and to the design community. I believe the ordinance needs amending to ensure processes are in place in the future. I recommend that there be a task force of industry members that own designing engineering firms with SBAC much like the five year diversity to monitor and ensure that communication is in place and functioning. Also, I would like to see the local preference points reinstated until finding from this task force is made public. There is chatter in the community that the state at the state level engineering consortiums are looking to undo the entire hub and certifications that are at the state. There's also chatter that the engineers are threatening to the city over the utilization of small and mid-sized design and engineering firms and the city so they gave in on the local preference points. We as SWIMB firms do not have lobbyists that represent us at the state and local levels. We are busy responding to RFQs that will give us work in the future. So a task force is needed so we can ensure that our voices are being heard and our business is given opportunities that we work hard to acquire. Thank you. Jane Gonzales met you. Hello everybody, my name is Jane Gonzales and I am the owner of MedQuil's Incorporated, a medical equipment company that is located in the east of San Antonio. And I have to tell you that all the work that we did for the 2015 disparity study that triggered some data ordinance that required the local preference points. And I want to commend the city because with the efforts of SBAC, with the efforts of all of us working together jointly, with that provided an opportunity for companies to graduate from being subcontractors to prime. Because at the end of the day that's what we want to do. We want to create jobs in the neighborhoods with our minority local companies that already exist in our neighborhoods. I'm going to present to you a situation through my business of some of the challenges that still remain with us and why it is very imperative that we continue working together identifying problems and trying to see what we need to do to fix them together, right? It's together as we work with the city we've got to all work together. It's not about, you know, throwing rocks or anything criticizing, but identifying the barriers to entry and the challenges and let's go up our sleeves and continue making our system better. MedQuil's was in a very contentious request for request for offer in 2016. Because of the surveyed ordinance the city requested that a request for offer be done when they subcontract percentage. The prime company said we're not going to do it, we're not going to do it. The community stood behind MedWheels and because of the fact that we finally challenged it, raised the value and said go to the review committee they said we're going to rebit the contract. The contract ended up being rebit as a result of that and they got the contract in June of 2017. The value of the contract was $886,000. I got a list of all these 90 day supply. My company had to go buy $145,000 of inventory I had to buy it and store it inside of my warehouse. At the end of that one year I looked at my inventory and I said what the heck, it's not turning. Does anybody know what that means? I'm like it's not turning it's not turning. I requested a meeting with the city and it turns out that the city came back and said guess what James, we don't really need all the inventory that you bought and you have in your warehouse. We actually need to buy all the inventory that we've got from $145,000. We're going to knock it down to $140,000. That was in July of 2019. If you guys turn to the second page I want to highlight for you here I use this as an example because at the end of the day even though this contract was an effort for me to create jobs in the east side for me to scale up to use this as an example for other cities and in return actually it could have bankrupted me. Good thing that I had a strong balance sheet because if I didn't have a strong balance sheet I would have been bankrupt. Time's up. Thank you for listening to me. So yeah from Azteca. I'm Cecilia with Azteca Designs in reference to the local preference points. Local preference points have permitted subcontractors to graduate to Primes. I'm a prime example as well. Swimbies are operating at Azteca Primes which has created additional challenges such as med wheels being able to acquire a contract that she just stated and also with Azteca Designs also took several contracts not only with the airport or the city of San Antonio and other agencies. Elimination of the local preference points for architects and engineers. It is important that we work together to better improve these opportunities for job growth and economic value. In the case of med wheels the community celebrated a milestone by debundling initiative. However when you're into the contract they put a major financial strain to the business. Let's work together to fix these issues. City of San Antonio y'all are not here to put us out out of business but here to create business so we can then create job growth. So we must stand together united we stand to pave the way for better opportunities. Thank you. Thank you. Janini Estela. Hi everyone, my name is Janini Estela I'm here and I'm a reporting professional as well. I also attended the last SBAC meeting and at the last SBAC meeting I asked questions about the San Antonio idea what answers can the economic development foundation provide. For the city cannot condone the exclusion of two important groups of people black business owners and Asian business owners which creates a visible case system in the seven largest U.S. city. Can this group take a vote to recommend no more city dollars we spent with the SAIDF until unacceptable answers provided to the citizens group? Can the at the city EDF ask for the executive director and chairman of the EDF to have the next SBAC meeting in January. And lastly where are taxpayer dollars going and supporting the EDF. Thank you. It's Albert D. Hernandez Jr. Is that right? Got it right. A lot of people have said some wonderful things and I want to do this quickly and not reiterate those points but they covered it very well. I'm a small business owner I've always been a small business owner and a landscape architect in this CFC group and we do consulting with the city of San Antonio, with the state, the county and federal jobs sometimes. What we like about this and I'll be quick about this is that we get to be or we get to have the opportunity to be primes. That's very important for me because then I run through the process often times as a sub we end up a year and a year and a half off before our work starts and even longer in some cases. So that's a disadvantage we're getting work that's going to be good in two years rather than in two months. The other thing that happens unfortunately is that we get scoped out of a lot of these projects. It goes to primes and big primes and the subs get scoped out in discussions with the city and with various agencies about how we can stretch those dollars so we end up losing a lot of work that way and that becomes an issue. I think that you cannot look at this as a short time or fix at all. Two years and we're all of a sudden we're going to do well. That is just beyond what I think is proper and appropriate for a program that really does want to do these good things and as back you all are great. And so is Savannah. But that is how we need to sustain our businesses, our small businesses. Many of us don't want to become big businesses. Had I wanted to do that I would have worked for a big business and hoped to climb within the corporate ladder. But I don't and I need to know that I'm going to be able to sustain this and have a profitable business when I retire and sell. So that's a really big issue for I think a lot of us. Thank you. Thank you. Brenda Johnson. Good Afternoon, my name is Brenda Bigree Johnson. I'm the CEO of Bigree Associates. We're a prime contractor. We have just been in the program for many years. I feel that I want to mirror what Albert said. I think everybody here has said a lot of great things today about various things that are really important. I'm not going to reiterate those. But I will say this is the second time that the same issue has come up. And unfortunately from my very own industry and the last time under open records it was discovered that the disparity study is incorrect. The numbers were wrong and the ordinance was pulled like Miss Cheryl Scully, our city manager and these rules did not go forward. So this is time number two. So I haven't seen data. I don't know what the data looks like. I haven't done an open records request but it is very very complicated and tedious how they go through these calculations and that data has to be looked at in detail in order to determine if the success that is being described by the city has in reality really occurred. I don't know the answer to that. Maybe it has. Maybe it has not. But I do know that it has to be looked at very carefully. The Supreme Court legislation that was cited in the letter by ACEC actually has a Supreme Court issued opinion that says that that legislation does not apply to affirmative action programs. So for the city to even base this decision on something on that legislation and that is just a threat by the ACEC to eliminate W&E from this program. I just feel like that the city has not even talked to the MWBEs. Has not allowed them an opportunity to respond. That being the worst violation but also the AIA or CBAC. I just ask that as we move forward that the data be provided and I have a list of about 15 or 20 questions of which I'm not going to go into all those questions now because I will wait until after the presentation to submit additional questions. However, there are many and the information that has been provided is extremely vague. So we're looking forward to this presentation and moving forward. I still think it is I just to say that 62% of all architect and engineering these that have been contracted by this city have gone to minority and women-owned businesses for me is just absolutely hard and extremely difficult to understand that calculation. So that's those are my comments and I do appreciate all of the work that all of you do at this committee. I know it takes a lot of your time and a lot of time away from your business so thank you very much. Thank you so much. Okay, that was the last citizen to be heard. I want to thank the citizens for all coming out and providing us with your perspective on the various issues in which you've fought forward. None of those issues are easy issues and I know that during the course of our meeting and future meetings we're going to focus on these concerns. I believe that we do have in our agenda the opportunity to go through some of the details as it pertains to the A&E piece. I also heard two people to address the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation piece and I don't believe at this time we have a response on that. No. No, we don't. And I would also say on the record I've been one of the people who have been strongly opinionated about the EDF and its lack of inclusion of African-American Chambers or Asian Chambers. So again we'll go back to our mayor and our city manager to understand those questions. I did take down a couple of the questions that were asked and I'll make sure that I follow back up with the city staff to make sure that those questions get back to our decision makers. The other issue was of med wheels and that issue really pertained and after looking at this handout I would ask the city if we could have the fire chief to come to the next SBAC meeting to tell us more so about the contract that was established with med wheels before and after so we can kind of understand better about these numbers and why the city could not fulfill its contract with med wheels in this way. To me again it's one of those opportunities where we can learn so perhaps there's a different perspective that we haven't heard but I think that we do need to flesh it out with the department to make sure that the department's acting in good faith of what they said they were going to do and we'll move forward with that item as well because the time does not permit us to address that within this meeting. All right for the SBAC regarding the citizens have you heard anything do any of you have any comments? I would request that you submit those questions. I'm planning to support our district form. Your questions are not calling on death years they're valid. Just at the moment we can't address them all I did like your recommendation that was something that kind of perked my ears about ceasing funds because of the decision that was made however I would highly recommend you submit those questions and comments so that they can't they are something that can be referred to and on record being proactive is something that we do need you to be aware of. Again we will we take what we do very seriously and it does not fall on death years so I highly recommend submit those questions your comments because I don't want to say it wasn't addressed and that is merely just to make sure that we do not have misinterpretation because that is the one thing we want to have is clarity for you. I appreciate you guys coming out talking with us and what's going on in the community. Thank you very much. I think from my my reach out to the seven is I love the engagement in people attending the meetings but it also is very helpful for you to reach out to representatives who are female in the area or the district I mean in general you can address them to any of them but the more information we have the more we can bring up different issues I'm appreciative of entrepreneurs have taken the time to be out here and I can't stress how important enough it is to have voices especially from people who have first time contracts that impact that to come and speak because those are the people it's affecting so hearing from individuals who and again have been referenced in annual reports who they just got a contract last year I want to hear more from them and how it affects so the doors open SBAC is always open to the public we invite you to continue to be engaged and to reach out to the representatives I think we have a continual growing concern and we go through the numbers we try to pull coals and everything and have an understanding but also if there's something that seems not completely right like with med wheels of understanding the documentation and this has happened and it doesn't I've got questions of my own this is the place to do that so thank you thank you and just to clarify what you're talking about the companies that were cited in the annual reports that were highlighted receiving first time contracts we're talking about the A&E first time WBDs so if we look at the city does a great job or the EDD group does a great job of putting out an annual report and so all that's online and so if anyone wants to review the data the information is very robust and there's also stories of how that impacts particular people so like for architect and engineering you've got Leonard Young with Young Professional Resources who states that in 13 years he's been in business he's been beneficial but these first time contracts in the last year these are 12 SWIMBs who received their first contract from the city so I see that Lopez Salas, med wheels long form propane SJ and J Solutions as well those are the individuals I think I'd like to hear more from and I think if we can encourage or maybe do some particular outreach because those voices are important Steven Gonzalez well again Steven's House District 9 I've been following this for a long time since I am in the industry so my job is for the company I work for is to look after all solicitations city, county state, federal when it particularly comes to city there's a lot of projects that myself with our leadership go through and we determine where we better fit on a project either as a prime or as a sub so there are some projects that are on the fence that we can either prime or sub some are way too large for us I do work for a small business that we just try to utilize our talents to sub on but then there are some that we definitely should prime on and then like I said the ones that are on the middle sometimes those points really do add value to us to get us towards more priming than subbing on those so you know my company is involved with ACC so I knew that this was coming down the pike I'm disappointed that it's this way right now hopefully I'll learn more about the presentation and the data hopefully I'll say more after the presentation so thanks thank you I'm a small business owner and I totally feel your pain and coming home and I do want to commend you being brave and speak up and share so keep doing what you do and we will try to help and make this better hopefully and thank you Michael Hall me too being a small business owner understanding exactly where you guys are coming from I'm a small business owner so I can relate and I can also relate to what you guys are saying so I appreciate you guys coming down here and let us hear you out and being a long time member of this board I can pretty much guarantee you and promise you that we're going to work hard to try to accommodate all of this because the bottom line for the whole thing is we're here to create business not eliminate business and being a small business doesn't take much to eliminate a business so I just want to guarantee you guys that we're going to do everything we can to make sure that we're doing the best to be fair to everybody so that everybody can appreciate and relate to the city because it is a joint venture it's not something that S back in just take over and say okay do this do that but the city has got to understand that small businesses sometimes are one paycheck away from going out of business that's why it's a small business and I want to make sure that everybody understands that we're going to do everything we possibly can and I do appreciate everyone coming down here to speak to you and we're going to we're going to go to work and I can promise you that thank you for coming at this time I'm going to turn it over to Michael Sundin to address the area of architecture so for those who have the agenda in front of you we argue this was listed as item B so we're just going to move it up to take it on the first one and then we'll take the remaining items proceeding after this one so first and foremost thank you all for coming here this afternoon we really appreciate the time you all put in just like S back we love hearing the feedback from our local small minority women in the business community many of y'all have seen not only in this room today but throughout our different conferences and things that we attend so as always really appreciate your feedback so today for this specific item what we're addressing is disabating utilization results that we've been seeing in our architecture and engineering industry and we wanted to walk through some of that data today and as always we are advocates in our office we have a group that works day in and day out to utilize our local small minority in the business community so when this success story came up it could result in a dial back of the program we really wanted to dive into the data to try to make sure and identify any possible gaps that there might be right is there something we have an entire that might still be able to justify application of points or something of that nature so diving in for those of you who have questions please hold them to the end so that way we can actually give the whole presentation and make note not that we're not wanting to hear it but it'll allow us to actually process the entire presentation first so recommend each other thank you so to kick it off as you all recall we've been engaged with the the data program since back in the early 2010 okay couple things so first point of order is that typically our meetings at that one o'clock and so I would like to have a motion from the board member to extend our meeting time and even if board members have to leave we're not making any decisions so we can go into information informational session without compromising the information that needs to be conveyed so that would be my first second is I really would love to hear I guess from everybody in the room but I really need to enable the SBAC members to be able to ask the questions to the staff because that is our existing process and I just can't have everyone ask me questions so again I'll ask the SBAC members to be able to facilitate questions to the staff as appropriate and we will be responsible back to those who have appointed us okay you won't need a motion to extend the meeting since you're up so let's proceed thank you all for the clarification so back into this again reviewing the SBAC application in the architecture engineering industry success we've had so as you all recall that have been a part of this since back in early before even 2010 the SBAC program went through a major overhaul that became effective in 2011 and that overhaul really changed the way in which the city went about utilizing our local small and women owned businesses on our city contracts at the prime contracting level and in the all-case consultant level and sub-consultant level and in the architecture engineering industry we really have three primary tools in which we go about that driving and utilization the first one is on discretionary contracts we can apply up to 20 sub-beta prime evaluation points for those of y'all who aren't familiar with what that means on discretionary contracts they are typically graded like a test meaning the one who scores the highest out of a scale of 100 points typically wins that contract and the criteria is made up of qualifications which is heavy in the architecture and engineering industry proposed plan and then of course your sub-beta points and that's up to 20, it is a range and they apply to small and small minority women owned businesses and I'll get into this piece in a second underneath it we also were able to apply sub-consulting goals to our architecture engineering contracts we can apply up to 40% to each project depending on the scope of work of that project and who is available in our central vendor registry to set those goals that's been very effective and then in 2016 through the last amendment process our city council approved the ability to set mentorship requirements on architecture engineering contracts and what that does is we apply those on kind of your higher dollar value, high profile projects where the winner of that project has to end our city's mentor protege program and give back to another small minority women owned business to teach them better business practices so before I move off this slide on the evaluation preference points we applied them in this industry even though there is a Texas state statute code 2254 that governs the procurement of architecture engineering services and it states that prime consultants for architecture engineering services should be solely made on a firm's competence and qualifications and that's probably why a lot of y'all haven't seen the veteran owned preference points applied to these solicitations ever or the local preference points ever applied to architecture engineering solicitations you've just traditionally seen those sub beta points. Those other two programs have not been able to apply to those solicitations because of that state statute. However, we were able to do so through the Croson decision that laid out very clear rules on how you can have these type of programs and it said that if you can prove that there is disparity in your local marketplace which is why we do disparities that use an annual report so frequently if you can prove that there is disparity and you can develop a tool that is narrowly tailored to address that disparity you can override that state and local law. So regardless of it being there we check the box back in 2010 disparity study that showed we still had disparity and we've been checking the boxes since then up into a certain cutoff point which we're going to do they still show disparity so that is why you have traditionally seen the sub beta points out of these projects regardless of that state statute and why you don't see something like a veteran on my story local preference point. So let's dig into the results of this program. So we've obviously been measuring this frequently, often daily, weekly and that's a testament to what one citizen member brought up of some of those data concerns back before 2010 when the disparity study happened at that time. We have a very robust process now in which we have which we capture payments to our local minority women-owned businesses that's a little more real time. So since then we've been tracking payments to these minority women-owned businesses to see how well they're doing in relation to their availability in our local marketplace. So in a sense of context I want to just walk everybody through this chart so that it's kind of easy to understand and read. And what we're going to start with first is some in which we and which the goal we're trying to meet. And that's this blue bar down here. This blue bar represents the availability of local minority women-owned businesses in the San Antonio marketplace that are wanting to perform or can perform architecture and engineering type services. These are the folks that can do it. It's kind of taken a little dip here and that's through some programmatic decisions and the reason for the most current tick is that prior to the last disparity study that was adopted in December of 2015 the city considered availability who is registered in the city's central vendor registry can perform architecture engineering services and is certified by the South Central Texas Regional Certification Agency as an architecture engineering firm. That is how that number as of 2015 was derived and that was our goal. However through the work with SBAC and the community that just those who are registered with us doesn't mean that's all the folks in the community who could do business with us. That's not really our true goal of where we want to be. Those folks who haven't registered with us, maybe there's a reason for that. We should still include them in our goal of what we want to meet, simplify processes, you name it a lot of the things our five-year diversity action plan seeks to accomplish to get those folks in our system and be utilized on our projects. So that's the availability of the next three markers you see on this slide represent availability just broken down in different ways and the first one is we'll start with this kind of tannish-orange bar that is representing all minority and women-owned businesses regardless of that the prime consultant or sub-consultant level that received an actual physical dollar in that given time frame. So that as you saw the need for that 2011 overhaul that we really needed to put a program in place that was stronger in architecture engineering. The next bar we want to look at is prime level utilization in architecture engineering and you'll see it took this dip and then in the 2011 one it was put in place we had an uptake in those businesses and the last bar on here the sub-consultant bar we really started tracking that individually in 2014 and you'll see that it's also had a steady decline the only reason you see a dip here is if you all recall during the 2016 amendment process the small minority women-owned business community asked if they could self-perform sub-consulting goals. So what does that mean? So when we set up let's just hypothetically throw out a 30% minority women-owned business goal that a prime consultant must meet if another minority women-owned business won it back in the day they still had to find another sub-2 and a lot of them came forward to us and said that really hurts our ability to build our capacity if we have the ability to self-perform we need to try to do as much as we can when we win these contracts so as a result we now allow them to self-perform as long as they possess the exact certifications of the sub-contracting goal and so some folks took advantage of that as you see some of the stuff retained at the prime level and it dipped a little bit because some folks took advantage of that. Now to de-plutter this chart really quickly I just want to high level show you this is the overall one with availability there this is the prime one we discussed second you see that uptake and takeoff there and then last the sub-consulting one we just discussed I just want to de-plutter it so you all can take a quick look at it so we kind of paused here when we've been seeing this really success since 2014 and when we were starting to think about how we're going to dial back the program to have parity with these goals we wanted to make sure we were uncovering any potential gaps in the data there maybe because it's great to look at numbers overall as you all know even dissection by prime and sub but we wanted to take an even deeper look at that and so we looked at these various data sets to ensure that there was no disparity seen with either these different ethnicities genders different valuations of contracts and things of that nature so the first thing we did is we said okay that overall data set are African Americans Asian Americans Hispanic Americans and Native Americans receiving their career they're getting a fair share of dollars from the city of San Antonio in relation to availability and the box checked yes for all the Native Americans they are about 1% efficient and quite frankly it's hard for us to set goals for these businesses there's not a lot registered in our central vendor registry so that's a call to action that if you know they're out there they need to be registered with us in order to set tools for them not a part of that narrowly tailored process that we talked about earlier for women-owned businesses Michael can I just since you used this terminology before just to clarify in each of these ethnicities utilization was exceeding the availability similar to the charts you were showing correct and for some context to that our annual reports publish this every time we can pull that up if we need to it missed out exactly the percentage in which we're paying the firms in relation to their availability and very nice bar charts that we'd be glad to do all if you wanted to so ethnicities gender for women-owned businesses I believe they're utilized at 28% and their availability is at 8% in this industry Michael yes sir so please explain to the audience because they may not understand about double counting so for instance when you talk about WBEs and you just went through the ethnicity race areas the people who are in the category of ethnicity are not counted in the gender box of WBE that's what we need to say that's a great point may I clarify that the gender WBE is just gender only and that's 8% right we don't double count we try to have transparency in a number so and this is just for prime contracts and that's 8% we checked it overall at the prime and sub level for these businesses so yeah to Chris's point we don't double count so if you're an African American women-owned business we don't put you in both categories so you're shooting up the numbers on both ends you would apply the African American category there and not that double count another thing I wanted to clarify but I don't think I did earlier is when I talk about measuring against city architecture and engineering solicitations it's all contracts to city issues outside of those in which federal dollars apply because at that point the federal government has a DBE program that would apply to those solicitations they happen very infrequently it's usually all city dollars that we do but it's all the city dollars for architecture engineering services that we're talking about here so it's not a subset it is the entire grouping so for high profile contracts another piece we wanted to look at is ok are the minority women-owned business community receiving the lower level contracts or are they receiving even the ones we consider high profile which are those that are discretionary which is every architecture engineering contract over a million dollars or those of high community interest those are the ones that are really difficult or seem difficult for small businesses to obtain and through the data we pull we found that there really wasn't much of a decline there were still exceeding availability on those high profile contracts so there wasn't too much of a dip in the numbers we saw there we also thought ok we're grouping architecture and engineering solicitations together right what happens if you break those apart right let's start reviewing those data sets individually maybe engineers are struggling more than architects and so maybe we should just tailor the tools to engineers or something of that nature and again the data proved out that for each ethnicity for each of their primates most all were being utilized greater than their availability in the marketplace the one down here we wanted to measure was we wanted to verify that those percentages that are increasing those dollar values that are increasing is it also increasing amongst the number of minority women all businesses on our city contracts right because that's all great if your percentages and dollar values are increasing but if it was five vendors participating seven years ago and it's five businesses participating now good for those five but we really wanted to spread it amongst the more and our data showed that wasn't the case I believe it was 12 or 14 minority women owned businesses in 2011 that were utilized on our city contracts and in 2017 it was around 50 so we were glad to see that not only was that trend of dollar value and percentages increasing but more firms were taking advantage of the tool and then the last thing we wanted to measure was kind of a scenario because obviously the recommendation here as you've all pointed out is the removal at this time of the sub-beta evaluation points on these contracts so staff went through all of the architecture and engineering contracts between 2014 and 2017 and they know who got awarded what they know who bid and who got scored what they knew the scoring criteria and sub-beta points applied and they ran a little scenario they just said what happened if we were to take these 20 points and reduce it down 15 and all the way down to zero that should be some level of analysis to show what effect it would have on that community with the awards that flipped or something of that nature and we were really proud looking at that data because that's really a testament to the architecture engineering community we were seeing that these businesses were winning contracts without the need of the points in those three years so much to the fact that of that 62% utilization that I showed earlier in environmental businesses had we have reduced those points down to zero our utilization would have only dropped by 2.89% points on those projects meaning they were winning based on our qualifications which is very positive that is what we ultimately wanted to see through this program so this is the data we poured over it was a pretty extensive effort but as I mentioned we did that we are advocates for you all we really wanted to make sure we were thorough in this decision making process because if a gap arose was there an ability to address that gap so as a result we have constructed so we don't just for y'all's knowledge our office actually does not set the tools on our city projects we have the program in place in the infrastructure but we recommend them to a goal setting committee in the goal setting committee to apply no sub data prime evaluation points on architecture engineering contracts that's kind of per that state law I just told you about earlier and the fact that in Croson you would have to prove there's disparity and we haven't seen that and another thing is some have asked why now if you've seen this over utilization since 2014 why now and our answer is we want to see trends I don't want to see success that could impact something that was a fluke based on what contract kind of you name it we wanted to see a steady number of years in place where we saw success before such decision was made so in doing so when we apply no points to these contracts we're proposing I think someone said it here already quarterly evaluations of what happens to those projects when we do this because regardless of what our scenario says we want to see that happen in real time when we apply no points do small minority women on business prime still win these contracts right are they still bidding at the rates they were and so to accommodate this and if those quarterly evaluations show that we take a negative decline in utilization we have the ability to ramp back and reapply and also beta points to those architecture engineering solicitations in the future that's what's going to be presented to SBAC quarterly and we're actually going to do a pretty thorough process so we're not going to lump in all architecture engineering contracts together we're going to because obviously there's going to be a mix for a little while of some with points and without we'll pull them apart and kind of look at those that didn't have points as a subset to get an understanding of where we're going and if a negative impact will likely happen and Michael this is a new process that we're going through because we've never had this type of issue before yeah we consulted with Franklin we helped us develop this program as a national expert and unfortunately he did not know of another community that was experiencing this so yes it is new for us and that's why we wanted to pour through as many data sets as possible making the decision now real quick we didn't require any type of sub data amendment it was designed this way since 2011 it applies to contracts based on the degree of disparity and availability of firms in the marketplace and so when there's a lot of disparity we obviously apply it very aggressively we try to go as far as we can and place the maximum tools the maximum weight to achieve the maximum results and when availability or when disparity is not seen we have the ability to dial back of the sub data program and so as mentioned if we see a negative result we'll dial back up now we are going to recommend that sub consulting goals for minority women on business is still apply to architecture and engineering solicitations for now we don't want to turn all the tools on and all the tools off let's deal with the one that's tied to a state statute and then still apply sub consulting goals with mentorship requirements to keep building up our local businesses and see how that impacts utilization in one small note I wanted to displace the bottom this only impacts our architecture engineering industry at this time we have not unfortunately seen these results in the other industries we measure professional services construction other services inputs and supplies so we want to see that in the other one so just a level set is just in architecture engineering services because the data was challenged by a couple of the speakers citizens is it possible to provide us with a list of those firms so we can see what we're counting as being part of this? That's a good point too we have so much clarifiers around the data and I want to make sure people understand so if we count someone as a local minority business while we'll show you they have to be local not every program does that meaning they have to be headquartered here or have a significant business presence in our marketplace and they have to be certified we can't count someone who is not certified by the south central Texas regional certification agency so they need those two criteria we're allowed to count them and we'll be glad to show you that data so the one thing I wanted to highlight is first of all councilman chan still here she remembers this she was one of the councilwoman in place to put this whole ordinance together and Brenda I was part of that group when we discovered some of the inaccuracies way back over here the reality is I was the assistant director I was in michael's position and we created a program I was hired by shelled to come in and revamp it because it was experiencing some problems one of my frustrations is the fact that this is an extremely positive story and that's kind of getting lost in sort of the discussion we're extremely pleased to see that beginning before we overhauled the program how low utilization was and how now even when you remove the points the small minority women-owned businesses are competing that's been the whole goal of this program from day one and as Michael mentioned that should be celebrated and cemented by the A&E community in particular by the minority women-owned businesses and so people have kind of called me called Michael and said who's watching this how can you all be doing this I just want to make it clear this office, this committee is designed to be your advocate we are the ones that are most concerned if there are there is going to be a ticket dip we are the ones that take pride in the success of the program and don't want to see that end so to say that we're going to be monitoring very closely is an understatement obviously as we've seen success we don't want to see this dip down so I just wanted to provide that assurance in a lot of ways we are that voice and in the infrastructure to kind of ensure that we stay on track this is all transparent it's here built in within the SPAC there is no other program that has a council appointed committee overseeing a specific program so these are all these are all employees just an assurance on the monitoring side you know me personally and Michael overseeing this we don't want to see this go down as a matter of fact we'd like to see the industry experiencing the same success but I say that knowing that the concern is valid if I was a small business and I knew those points were there and I saw them being eliminated I completely understand but just from an assurance standpoint we want to see you all continue to win these contracts without the points I think the subcontracting goal is getting missed also on these bigger projects it's the subcontracting provided you small businesses you small minority business access to these contracts that's going to continue and that capacity building is going to continue so that you can compete as a part I just wanted to add about my two cents in so do I see you from TCI okay chair so one, two again, Bonnie from District 4 the one thing I wanted to say reference is something that Michael made statement about local and that you're that you're registered here no that your headquarters is actually housed here I make reference to that because it was brought up at one point you know open small businesses throughout outside of Bear County and other cities we made sure that we emphasized that you were headquartered here and that it was brought up to our attention to make sure that it was brought to the forefront about being a woman minority owned business so your statements as far as our questions about making sure that we advocate and continue to voice them that's one thing that we did stay firm on is making sure that the headquarters are here and that it is within the the county first before it even opened out to anyone asked so I appreciate the overview I do have questions as I'm sure many got due so the first is I'll say I was here working in EDD when we did the study so I have a unique perspective and also being an entrepreneur on this side of the house I can understand now both sides when we did talk to Franklin Franklin had a great analogy when we were going through the process and what he said is when you look at this type of program in remedying discrimination you have to think of it as having a patient who has diabetes and so for that when you give insulin you have to maintain a dosage but when you can't think oh he's great because now you take away the insulin and oh he's going to do fine he's going to do better and maintain that insulin level or that medication in order to continue to remedy that particular issue of you know that white disparity so I cheer on that we've exceeded and done well and I understand we're the 31 and the 43 are with regards to like your over utilization that's great a lot of good first time contracts people have been knocking on that door who are now involved in winning contracts but the one concern for me there's two the first is where that gap is between the 31 and the 63 and the utilization because we did a really good job I thought of going beyond the central vendor registry where people have to be registered and saying oh there's people in chambers who are not registered and so we gathered all that and the availability increased now that wasn't something that they needed to do but they did it because they thought that was in the spirit of fairness so I was ready to be a part of that team but I'll say I'm really interested to see and have Chris's point whose have impacted as a small business owner within that realm and it's how I'm trying to justify where the gap is so if you're telling me there's only 31% availability when we got 63 utilization then where are we missing like what I'm trying to figure out where like do we not count enough or there more people that are getting registered so that's my first question the second is when we look at the utilization conversion from the last like 2011 to 2017 overall we've only grown to 24% increase over across all areas so if we're doing well in architectural engineering and maybe the pressure is coming from non-minority businesses who feel that that's unfair and that are citing statute I'm concerned what happens whose next construction because they're doing pretty well or is it goods and services and is their statute that is impacted that we've kind of gone around because we've been able to show that there's disparity because my concern is once we start saying okay we're not going to give prime points but you can still have a small piece of the pie but you can on the whole pie you can divvy out or let's be in this venture state and we move away from where we were in regards to self-performance then what industry is next and maybe a target for that kind of rush map great points and we're going to go to the city staff TCI if you all want to answer that that's fine but what I just wanted to bring up is we are in TCI and TCI and we oversee all of the architecture and contracts engineering contracts and all of those things and everything and first off we want to really commend EDD and all of our architectures and engineers because the success is something that TCI is incredibly proud of and excited about and it also is one of those things that we are committed to and continue and so we're going to be watching just as closely as EDD is in conduction and partnership with them and watching and seeing if this is decreasing because it is so important to TCI that we continue to have our small businesses and our minority and limited-owned businesses as part of our architecture engineering community Michael I mean just to answer your question directly and Troy to be correct if I'm wrong the state statute that kind of governs how we procure limited to qualifications is really only based in architecture engineering services and there's some professional services solicitations outside of that I think just construction you don't have those level of strictness to the process and then I think in other services and good supplies it's also dictated differently so really just like protection engineering as a whole and maybe a piece of how professional services is considered and that's a great point because there's a chance that we could still similar to your veterans own preference program and your local preference program you still might be able to business and I think it's worth clarifying the EDD is not in charge of local preference nor the veterans program so those are separate so my eyes are kind of glossing over because I'm still I'm getting lots of text messages right now from people who are in the room because they still want to know more about this issue of transparency and so this issue of transparency I'm going to address because as a chair at SPAC at some point I was aware of some of the conversations about this legal issue pertaining to BANI now with that said during the time in which it was brought to my attention we were also fighting like had to get our diversity action plan approved by council we also have had a about a three month review now of the finance procurement preference programs which they want to get our input on so to be very transparent about it there was nothing that was I guess provided to me or provided to the SPAC that was lost in the interpretation that we just dropped the ball the fact of the matter is that there's a lot of different high level issues in which we're being worked by the SPAC and so I apologize if that came across as the SPAC not being on its toes I will say that the letter when Grace Rose provided it to me was the first time that I had saw that letter and so to that point what we have been discussing is the fact that since this is the very first industry the very first category that was requested to be rolled back or to be suspended with applying points I said what is the process moving forward because as you've alluded we're going to have not only this issue with A&E but we may have it in construction we may have it in professional services I don't know we don't know but the most important thing is that we establish a process that is regular that's predictable that we establish an email channel back to the citizens because they've been asking why don't we get email notifications of this meeting we can do more to be more transparent with the agenda that's been posted about what we're doing but again I don't take as a citizen I don't take the actions of moving forward with applying the tools in which we have learned about during our disparity studies of being wrong I just think that it will support timing and I wish that the city would have come to the aspect first to say this is what we're considering doing because that's why we're all here now we're explaining why the train left to station now the other piece that I remember that our attorney Franklin at the time said he said you have to as citizens you have to protect your ordinance because if you don't and you have any type of weakness then your ordinance can be contested and you may lose it so yeah I understand this notion that we may need to go back to the department EDD and say can you consider just some of the requests which were to maybe study this a little bit more that you sent out and give the feedback to the city manager so you can all digest what you heard today without truly taking away points on contracts that may sustain some of these emerging companies these companies in which you've already identified you know I had another question that I asked to the regional certification agency and they gave me the example of Brooks and Brooks uses a dual certification on A&E so for instance you'll have a minority woman and that's how they determine disparity so they boil it down a little bit more than just saying WBE I know that that will take a lot of rigor and work because our disparity studies have been based on WBE but is the Brooks model wrong? The Brooks model show that we do have disparity with Native American women business enterprise and then that category would be pushed as a way to get parity I mean that's a different level of thinking about this issue so I'm not quite sure if the data you know I know that the data had questions from the people here because again they want to see the data that's fair we also know that with that being said then maybe the question of can we create a task force which was what Grace Rose had suggested maybe that's something we go back to the city manager and say hypothetically is this something that the city would like to entertain I just want to make sure that these questions that have been asked are properly addressed so at the end of the day we can say that we address the questions that were provided by the citizens and that we address the concerns of the industry that we're not being premature in the knee-jerk reaction of maybe perhaps catering to an organization or organization that have questioned why are we doing this at the end of the day I think that we all want to have the success stories of our small minority women owned businesses and hopefully we'll also go back to the recommendation from last meeting and the local program and the veterans programs under the same citizens umbrella so then that way we can talk apples apples and not be all over the place in terms of these programs I also told a former city council woman, Alyssa Chan, that she would be able to ask a question and I'm going to give my chair for her to do that. Thank you so very much chair, my name is Alyssa Chan and I am a small business owner I am in the 80 industry and the customer and I have been working as an engineering firm for 26 years and I also worked very hard to try to get this small business minority program and Renee, thank you your team has worked with me and the goal is to level the playing field and I think that thanks all the members on this back for your time, I think our goal is the same is to try to help small minority businesses so that we can compete without being preferential however, this preferential point, it is critical I think the commission of Gonzalez mentioned for the small businesses to become a prime if this chart is shown and I think that will be a successful story and I think that's what we should cherish but I do have some questions about data and I think Renee you know that I do have you know because I agree that from my experience just by looking at 62% all city contracts I think it will be great if I really see the data that over 50% of all revenue went to minority and women know but that is something that I just cannot come around with and I think that data is important because possible to share the raw data being an engineer I think we can analyze the data we don't mind the data the second thing is when you say that there is no doubt but count how do you decide whether you will count my engineer and farm to be a woman or to be a minority that will be one question and then also on the availability and you know since the disparity study availability has always been an issue because depending on that availability then you can reach the go or you may not reach the go I think that needs to be expanded as well but at the end of the day I do agree with the chair that if you wanted to have a policy change and my heart is with a small business I think whenever you want to have a policy change it's important that we address the concerns that the citizen or the industry has so that everybody can have the buy-in so I would personally encourage that perhaps we need to go back let the community see the data let's see what needs to be done but instead of rushing and give you an instruction I think we perhaps need to slow down a little bit sometimes slowing down a little bit is actual acceleration because if you have everybody's buying then we can all come in and celebrate and then you know be on board so I would say that I know that you are one of your slides Renee and Mike I think you are instructing already the GoSend committee to not keep the point I would say that perhaps we need to review that let's talk about it I'm sure that everybody are looking on the same goal and then perhaps we do instead of immediately slow down 20 points maybe we monitor with 10 or 15 or 5 whatever that might be one of the points I want to make is that when you mentioned about quarterly monitoring now the RFQ doesn't issue every quarter you don't know when the RFQ is going to issue so one quarter you may have nothing another quarter you may have a lot so how do you actually monitor that progress I think need to give in some thought so those are I think we still have a lot of things that we need to address thank you so much Randy yeah probably for Mike that understanding that 31% of availability going to the 60% utilization are we looking at the number of businesses in A&E across the city and saying that the 31% is the minority and then the 60% is we're saying that 60% of the money that was spent on projects was went to those so my question is of all that 31% were those broken down and looked at in terms of did half of that money go to one particular portion and then 25% go to another one and 2% that would be something that I'm interested knowing about because then you can look at and maybe you're not taking away points from everybody you get a point back to a certain ethnicity or gender right and has that data been boiled down to look at specifically so the answer is yes you're bringing these questions up in order for us to come back to you and provide that so we're joining this down so that we can when Michael went through that chart with the eight, nine boxes one of the boxes was ethnicity and gender and that's what you were doing too we're taking these down that way we can provide you all with responses to all these questions could one top box at the top saying that yeah we had checked it off and we're still efficient there's still a disparity so how many are available so I also want to say this we're doing this on a federal level this chance asks a question about how how does your certifications work so when you have your business and you register it and you certify it you certify it according to the areas that you felt were important so if you check off the box and I did for my school African American my company's run by you know a woman so woman veteran so we did all those check box but when it comes down to the actual application of of what we call ourselves it always starts at race it's the first selection then it goes to ethnicity then it goes to gender and then everything else and I say that that's the hierarchy that's not something that the city makes up that's a hierarchy that is chosen that you've chosen so I have another business that I've chosen not to identify myself as being a whatever so that business is registered a little bit different than the first business that I have and again that's because from a strategies perspective maybe I think I'll compete better as a veteran then I would as a woman and I'm not a woman right now but you get my point so those are choices of which we make when we initially register our businesses and according to the certification agency if you want to remove ad you can always do that at any time in the lifetime of your business so that's your business and that's what you have to do so you're saying that's an option for a woman you could either go Hispanic or I could go woman is that what you're saying according to the south regional certification agency yes you can remove or add a declaration but remember in the procurement game it's always going to be they're going to look at you first as your race, ethnicity and then your gender ethnicity, Trump's gender to kind of answer this Chan's question I'm not so sure that's the case because I think I know that Austin you actually select how are you going to be counted I don't think the certification does you come in with all your when we count when we count it with parts and numbers like when they say WBE and I shall use myself as an example right I'm counted as an HEE or an MBE I may have a certification for WBE but I'm not double counted I am this well in that case I will be even more well okay so this is WAM this is WAM this is 60% so in that case my term will always be counted as a minority not as a woman correct and that's great clarification so I think more transparency with regards to education some of the graphs the data I know that we're kind of over and I know we had different reports and discussions that we're going to discuss but I think at this point I would recommend that the business B waiver and the preference program be pushed to the next agenda meeting I'm not sure if anyone else wants to add to the conversation but I just want to be mindful of time for everyone involved you can't take action here and I like to acknowledge I just had there was one discrepancy in the presentation and that is it discussed availability as being through the registration which is six, how many counties six eleven forget eight so first it was presented that the availability was based upon eight counties then it was later presented that the availability was only based upon local offices, local offices those are that's two totally different numbers one of the board members had mentioned that the fact that for the program includes the MSA has always been that way developed that way continues to be tracked that way I think she was referencing the local program so there's a little disconnect there so the local program you're only counting women owned businesses that have a local office here for architects and engineers as available we count all minority women owned businesses who are located in the MSA our metropolitan statistical area as being available or have a significant business presence which is you've been here for a year and 20% of your employees were gotten that local office but that hasn't changed that has been that way since the state but that's not what you have to have to be certified with the south central correct so those numbers are totally if you're certified and not local we won't count you as being available both you're not available because you're not local because that's who we're trying to resolve disparity for and you won't be counted toward utilization and so there are if that's the case then I just want to clarify there's 32% availability of WBs there's 31% of minority and women owned businesses as a full class that do architecture and engineering services specifically so you are lumping the minorities and the women together but they're not double-coped right because we have no form we can't do any particular action or make recommendations that's correct that's correct and we've been taking all this information down and all the questions down at the next meeting let us provide a report out on all the information the fact is from a transparency standpoint we have a monthly dashboard that gets updated with an annual report that goes over to the data we now tie directly to our SAP system that pulls the payment data so I'm very comfortable with sharing the data so let us find a way to produce the request that you had in a simple way and good to do to work out all the questions you all had thank you so much Mike, I want me to overstep maybe recommendations you have on that we'd be glad to show what we need to show alright on this issue of A&E I appreciate all of the input and let's give our city staff the opportunity to show us what they've come back with I have full faith and trust in the department some of these, to be honest with you we look for feedback like a process to dial down this new phenomena with an address part of that so as these issues bubble up can we present ideas to us back on hey the next time when we reach these milestones can we develop absolutely, that makes sense from a monitoring standpoint how are we going to monitor that that's all things that we're interested in developing out also, that's the charge of what Michael does these are all great suggestions that we think would benefit the SBAC and benefit the program in whole I haven't heard anything here that concerns me in the sense that we need to do a better job communicating what this is in place we're all for that process improvement is how we operate it obtains to so you're saying we can submit all our concerns and make sure you're all okay it's the center of the microphone it obtains to your concern with the EDF I would like for the department to go back to the manager to find status the mayor told me personally that I would like to submit and give him some time so giving him some time is about now so we'd love to have an update as obtained to the med wheels issue I would like to see the fire chief can make the opportunity to meet and we have clarity on when we're meeting next time please so we can actually let's jump down now to the monthly events so that way everyone here can be aware of the great activities that are happening in the city will be participating in on item number 5 sure so December as we kind of wind down towards the holidays we have kind of two big events happening in the city they aren't the San Antonio's events but we're in love to participate in them because there's a lot of great information that can be passed down to our local small minority business community so this event is going to be the Bear County Swimby Conference if y'all have never been there a lot of different exhibitors organizations show up and it's a great chance for you to go learn what other folks do in addition to the city of San Antonio and how they can help your business grow so that's kind of an all day event December 5th from 7.30 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Freeman Expo Hall and Michael will you be doing special presentations during that time on behalf of us we have a slew of our city department we show up and we do a variety of different presentations on how to do business with the city of San Antonio thanks for that also very important this month and this is kind of kudos to Chris the Governor's Small Business Forum will be in San Antonio December 13th, 2018 I know you've played a role in that and that's from 8 a.m. to 2.30 at the Marriott do you want to say anything else about it yeah, if you have a register register, register and register we currently have 100 registrants so we'll take registration at the door it is $20 as a low entry fee we do have people who are going to be honored that I just really feel very excited now actually the security, she's going to be honored SJ&J Solutions it's going to be one of the Black-owned companies that the Governor's Office will recognize when the Governor's Office approached me about the Governor's Forum they said that they wanted to honor African-Americans in business that was the first thing they wanted to do so you haven't seen that at the state level ever, this is the first time and as such we have African-American businesses that are in a position to be recognized at the state level so congratulations I'm told this morning that you're going to be honored to recognize there are four others, five others but again actually Joe Monroe's was the first African-American company that received a contract coming out of that $0 bond situation that's a fine so that was landmark and so he'll be honored and his family so there's three others registered either to support them what's the registration registration link we can send it out again the city has already sent it out once but thank you Stephen hopefully Mike can do that again for us do you cover all your events? and then the global chamber is having a mixer at radio plaza at four o'clock so if anyone wants to attend you're welcome to come to crash our party and the address is the address is 1-4 Peabody Avenue and that's near Port San Antonio and Amy Contreras is our guest speaker from the city of San Antonio Economic Development Department and she'll talk more about what her role is and helping to help businesses in this international space that we talked about so I'm going to check the director of global change so any other announcements for the future business? yes actually so I was going through some of the last minute meetings and there were a few things that got kind of pushed to the wayside so I wanted to make a point of order for it so Chris you had actually asked about the allocation of funds to different chambers of commerce with regards to equity on how much we're supporting Hispanic African American and such and so I'm not sure if something can be just kind of updated as a report in January but I don't want it to fall by the wayside I believe it's an initiative included in the diversity action plan under reporting I can't remember the time frame but yes it's a task of the job I don't know which committee but I remember diversity action plan yeah I want to say it wasn't both but I want I want to make sure that that doesn't fall by the wayside and then the second was brought up with the LGBT chamber and outreach with the bar certifications so extending them an invitation to be involved was there and then Randy had asked about the airport and the DBE program and so again for future reference just want to make sure this don't fall so our next meeting is scheduled for we don't have anything scheduled for December this will be our December meeting we will schedule something for January that will set out I believe it's the 18th we will schedule for and we will send something out to the reminder okay alright I'm going to entertain most to assure you I'll make the motion moved here I will second alright