A bill for an ordinance amending Sections 28-34(a), 28-71, 28-72(d), 28-74, 28-75(a)(4) and 28-222(d) of the Revised Municipal Code of the City and County of Denver regarding the Construction Bid and Proposal Process, Payment Documentation and Timing Process, Prompt Payment and Release of Retainage to Minority/Women Business Enterprises and Small Business Enterprises, and the Evaluation of the Division of Small Business Opportunity related to the Minority/Women Business Enterprise Program and the Small Business Enterprise Program. Amends Sections 28-34(a), 28-71, 28-72(d), 28-74, 28-75(a)(4) and 28-222(d) of the Revised Municipal Code of the City and County of Denver regarding the Construction Bid and Proposal Process, Payment Documentation and Timing Process, Prompt Payment and Release of Retainage to Minority/Women Business Enterprises and Small Business Enterprises, and the Evaluation of the Division of Small Business Opportunity related to the Minority/Women Business Enterprise Program and the Small Business Enterprise Program. The Committee approved filing this bill at its mee
13 eyes. 1210 has been approved. Congratulations. All right. We have another public hearing this evening. Councilman Castro, will you please put 1324 on the floor? Yes, Mr. President. Once you put your speaker. Can you turn your. Yeah. There you go. Thank you. I moved the council bill 1324 to be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved and seconded. Public hearing for Council Bill 1324 is now open. May we have the staff report from the diocese? All right, Councilman. New. Thank you, Mr. President. I look forward to presenting this today. And I first want to start by just thanking Councilman Cashman and Councilwoman Ortega with helping me with this ordinance who was there. We worked on this for over a year, looking at all the issues with the construction prices and talking to the many participants in the process . And and I especially want to thank everyone who brought this initial issue to our attention and and the organizations Helga, Gertrude, Joslyn Robinson and MAXINE Prior, all representing majority and MAXINE with Artie's formal process. So thank you for your support, especially with Frank. Thank Diane Durfee, who's really the city attorney, sister city attorney who helped us guide us through this process and the many city departments that we talked to and and the, you know, city auditor, mayor, staff and so everyone so really appreciate all their their participation and support through this process. The best this is a best practices bill about the subcontractor. And it all goes back to the 2014 revised ordinance on the minority women in Small Business Enterprise Construction Contracting Ordinance. This ordinance addressed the many years of discrimination for the minority small businesses in construction and really provides the the growth and assistance to the growth and development for these organizations, allows the participation in city contracts and certifies their participation as individual companies, and also sets a percentage of goal a goal percentage of city construction contract value. So and most importantly establishes the division of small business opportunity here is to assist, help train and and participate with the the maybe with business small business looking at their payment practices and monitoring their activities. So a great ordinance, no great framework for development. And so we were proud to use that as the basis for our amendment. The how this all began is began again about a year ago. And we again heard testimony from many subcontractors about issues with problems of payment of payment irregularities. We heard issues about change orders that weren't properly paid or lumped together in a percentage of payment made, as well as there is work done on proposals that really wasn't compensated, especially when a contract was awarded. So and a lot of discussion too about the lack of support of dispo in the education and training. So we heard a lot of issues that we wanted to address in addressing in this ordinance. And the thing that disturbed us the most is the real difficulty that all the minority subcontractors of small business had about coming forward and talking to us and and being able to publicly testify. They were really scared to do that. They were felt threatened. And because of this issue and they met with us individually, but because of their lack of willingness to be candid publicly, we put a retaliation, a part of this ordinance, which we'll talk about in a minute . We interviewed all the subcontractors and the mayor, and we'd also interviewed subcontractors to get to validate their issues and concerns over. This is made up of five major portions as a billing and payment tracking process. And I'm going to go through each one of these. We have an early completed work routine, a retainer payment program, the linkage of letters of intent and construction utilization, the retaliation issue that I spoke of and the evaluation of the Division of Small Business Opportunity. The first one is the billing and payment tracking process. This came to our attention because the data on all of the billing requests and payments really wasn't transparent to to the city officials. Our city payment people were doing a good job. But what was done outside of the payment system of the city could not be seen. And so it sort of promoted bad behavior on a few small contractors with these subcontractors. So we really developed this payment, a tracking system. We model it after our system is gone and have the I'll go over the list of information in a minute. But almost 70 to 80% of the information we're talking about is already being collected by the Division of Small Business Opportunity and put it in their system. So we feel good that it's not going to cause a great deal of work on data collection. Our city attorney is counseling us all the time to stay separate away from the management of the construction projects. So this is strictly a process between this the minority subcontractors and small business and dispo. It's all about compliance. It's not about the management of a construction projects. So the contractors will not. We need to be involved and we'll be tracking it separately for billing system. This list I just showed you of the items we'll be collecting, just wanted to put in red those items that are presently being collected already. Just to give you an idea that we're not going to be collecting a lot of new information, but we what we what we want to do is try to automate it with the BTG system, compliance system. And we want to have a lot of discussion about how to make sure this is easy and is efficient for all of the minority subcontractors and for dispo and and promote that support and assistance to them. I included a clear copy of the this is the RTD form that they use. They developed this about seven or eight years ago, had the same problems with payment irregularities, with subcontractors by contractors and and by making this information transparent, it corrected those problems. It is really clear that this system worked very well, and we think that it will be working very well for us. Just to show emphasize again, the separate of the way we're handling this is strictly by compliance with the subcontractor submitting reports and information to dispo in a communication process versus the billing process where they submit billing requests. To the contractors, totally separate processes and maintain it that way. That's the tracking system. The second issue is the early completed work or changed payments. We had some concerns about this from subcontractors who were doing work early in a construction projects early the first month, and then all of a sudden the retainers, which is 5% of the billing request, is withheld by the city to the end of the project is being withheld like, you know, 24 to 48 months to the end of the construction project, even though their work was completed in the first month of the project. So what we're asking to do is allow the sort of the adopt the state policy on that and allow at the request of this contractor, if he suggests to the city is the work was done, fine allowed. That subcontractor has completed his work to be reimbursed for his work change. The next letters of intent and construction utilization. There's a part of the 2014 ordinance that talks about when the project's specific proposals are accepted by the city, letters of intent by the contractor or to the subcontractors are submitted, telling the city who is going to be performing the work. Also, as part of the ordinance, five days after construction begins, the contractor is to submit a report to to the way to division small business opportunity, confirming who's doing which subcontractors are doing the work. And so both those reports are just need to be matched up. If you don't if they do not match for some reason, then dispo would be responsible for asking the questions. Why not? Retaliation. I don't need to describe this any further with it was the talk, the subcontractors talk to us. But it was just very disheartening that that they were so scared to be able to talk directly in public. So I thought this provision of our ordinance will help them. If there's any kind of retaliation issue that is reported, it will be followed up on for correction. And the last is the most important is the evaluation of the Division of Small Business Opportunity, where we have good people in our Dispo office, they want to do a good job. And we've had some staffing issues. And and is this is going to give us an opportunity to really improve the department and improve the process and improve the support to the to the subcontractors and make sure that they're that our efforts to for them to grow and develop are really enhanced. So I've listed several things of assistance and education and training and following up, especially following up on any kind of irregularity as they find out. Those are the five parts of the ordinance, but there are three other areas. I just want to mention that we're going to be tracking and it's the next slide and these are this all relate to existing policy procedures. All about that payment for approved completed work ordinances says we do pay for that and we'll be tracking that and that'll be part of our tracking system. The timing for a completed work, our property system that the city construction folks have is works very well. And so we're going to again be part of our tracking system and the end of project routine is payment. That's been an issue of making sure that the subcontractors are paid promptly for retainers at the end of a project. The present policy is that when 95% of the construction project is complete, then the amount of retainers that's over in excess of two times the uncompleted work is can be released to the subcontractors. So as an example, if there's $500,000 in retained retainers, there's $200,000 in uncompleted work to be finished, then two times that before 100,000. So you can release $100,000. The difference between the 500,000 and the 400,000 this day, that process have been working well. We just need to monitor it to make sure it happens in a timely manner. In the last year, we want to focus on three really critical items. You know, this is all about the 2014 ordinance. This is all about the growth and development and eliminating discrimination and and helping our small business and minority firms prosper. That 2014 ordinance was well crafted, well written, and it's an excellent document. And all we're doing is adding just a few little implementation tools to to make sure that the intent of that audience is carried out. It's all about the small business and the minority firms. It's not about the management of a construction project. Data, data, data. We hear that so much. And this is critical that our process that we're going to be tracking all elements of the payment request and processing of payment. So to make sure that we see all activities within that process and be able to ask any questions if we find irregularities and all the data in the world can't help you if you don't have a department is following up actively. And we're we're looking forward to this division of small business opportunity. Having the staffing, the resources to support our small businesses and minority firms, help them grow and develop and help them educate and be trained. And and we really think that through the tracking system and the data that we're going to have and the the efforts of our division of small business, we're going to make a real difference. And it's going to help our small businesses grow and develop like we want. So that's not our fault. Mr. Chairman. Mr. President, so thank you very much. Thank you. Councilman Nu will now hear from the public. We have a one hour courtesy public hearing, but we have actually eight speakers signed up. Madam Secretary added one more. And so we will be moving on and I'm going to call the first five speakers to come up just to save a little time to that front row here. So, Helga Gruner, you will be first and Bennett, Jocelyn Robinson, MAXINE Prior and Keller Hays. Come on up and we'll get Ms.. Helga up first. Good evening. I'm Helga Grunwald. I'm the. Newly retired. Executive director of Hispanic Contractors of Colorado, where I was for 17 years. So I wanted to say that I've been involved with the Mwb ordinance since then. Mayor Hickenlooper launched the first committee in 2004, and when that first ordinance was was launched in 2007, we were very, very hopeful about all of the growth and progress we'd see with the small contracting community. And it didn't happen. What's happened over those years is that DSB has gotten buried further and further within the bowels of the city. It used to be the Mayor's Office of Contract Compliance. Another thing that's never happened is the education portion. It's astounding to me that you hand someone a certification and you give them absolutely no training on key tools like LCP, Tracker B, two G, now tech store. These small businesses need to know how to use the tools to get themselves paid. Another big problem has been as council and you mentioned, that there just isn't the staff to do the certification and training and monitoring that's required for all of the work that's coming up in the city and county of Denver. You're going to need these contractors. And another part of the program that's never really been implemented is your SB defined selection pool that was created to build capacity. The city was going to put projects into that pool that only small businesses could bid on, and it has almost not happened. We've seen very little of it. You also have an SB pool, emerging small business pool, and we've seen almost no work put into that. And yet the ordinance recommendation said create these programs, SBA, CSP, where the small contractor can work directly with the city. And in that way you will grow these businesses. And so I would encourage the city to look at that also. And finally, I'd like to say, with all the construction you have coming up in the city, you are going to need every single contractor that you can find. And not only will workforce be a problem, but finding contractors to do the work will become an equally big problem. And you're competing with a lot of other agencies that have a lot of work, and I think you need to put yourself in the best position. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Grant. All right, Ms.. And Bennett. Hi. I see. I mean, I've been and I'm in councilman news territory. I'm a citizen of the city county of Denver. I'd like to thank the council members for their collaboration over the last 14 months and also your assistance in the validation. Of my. Observations and experiences during the period of 2014 to 2000, 15, 16, 2016. And also your due diligence. I mean, I've met with all of you. We've gone over this, and I think it's fairly apparent what's happening. But I, I firmly believe this implemented properly, Denver can be a model in Denver has been a model for a lot of things. And I think Denver can be it's a perfect model. We have the workforce. We have the development. I mean, it's waiting to happen. I would like to personally thank Councilman, new Councilwoman Ortega and Councilman Cashman for their 14 months for meetings and working with me. Unfortunately, over the 14 months, there has been some collateral damage in the construction industry as a result of my coming forward. And I'm I'm very sorry about that. And I'm hoping in the future, as you put together your programs, this can be corrected. As an entrepreneur of small business, both in mechanical contracting and I.T. and by the way, I had 100 people in lower downtown when the viaduct was still there. So I've been there, and I understand the benefit that I had was for years. It was many years at Big for accounting firms. These small business do not have that benefit. And I noticed that there's training here. And there's training here. And there's training here. If. We could combine all the training and also do a questionnaire. Are we training what they want to be trained on? I think we're missing it. And the mentor program is not happening. They're not being mentored. Mentored means you get out of your chair, you go to the job site that they're working on and you find out what their problems are. That's true. Mentoring, and that's not happening. Two. And I think some of this is already happening. So I might be repeating. But the office maybe we the office has got to be a director position within the top organization of the mayor's office. Period. It needs to be reported frequently to the city council and to the auditor. The data you develop on the B to G software must be which will not take three months. Meaning take a. Minute. Your data. Your money, your time, your time. Time's up. Thank you very. Much. No problem. Thank you. Thanks for your work on this. Okay. Miss Jocelyn Robinson. She could have had another minute of my time. I am the facilitator for the Black Construction Group and we are out there to support and provide resources for small businesses. I also have been a of I'm a former employee of Dispo, so I know the difficulties that they are facing right now with the staff shortages and the work just continuing to increase. The only thing I would like to say, I do absolutely agree with Helga and and but I want to stress the importance of not adding more work to a department that is already struggling with the workload. So making sure that we have a BTG system and it's not a manual system is going to be essential. And making sure that we provide the kinds of resources and educational opportunities for our small businesses to build capacity is absolutely important. So thank you for your time. Thank you, Ms.. Robinson. MAXINE. A minute. MAXINE Pryor. Good evening, everyone. I am the Colorado State Chapter President for Comfortable, which stands for the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials. Ms.. Prior, would you introduce yourself, your name, just for the record? Sure. Can you tell us my first time? MAXINE Prior Chapter President four Come to Colorado. I must say, I'm very pleased that Councilman New and Councilman Cushman and Councilwoman Debbie Ortega have taken this on. This is a very critical time in our city. We've got some explosive growth taking place and building our foundation and our infrastructure. From a complaints and monitoring standpoint is incredibly important. Similar to Helga, I also serve on the CII Committee Construction Empowerment Initiatives Subcommittee, in particular for the Disparity Study Slash Ordinance Review. So we're going through line by line to see how we can help make an improvement and add to it. Actually, we started about the same time and were made aware earlier this year of the councilman's efforts. So we're very pleased to be able to take part in this historic activity. I'm very optimistic about the increased compliance and monitoring aspect of what this is going to bring. The orientation training for the subs. I am a stickler for training. I believe in setting expectations upfront and making sure that you have an education. You have the tools. You're aware of what your rights and responsibilities are so that further down the line and into the projects, there's no question. And we can have an intelligent discussion as to how to move forward. Capacity building and supportive services. Those things are also key. And I think, again, this ordinance is going to help launch us in that direction to make sure that that's going to take place. So thank you. All right. Thank you, Ms.. Pryor. Keller Hayes. Thank you. Keller Hayes. I work with the U.S. Department of Transportation and their Small Business Transportation Resource Center. And I really want to thank the entire council for discussing this tonight and looking at this. I have worked with the our clients. We have 560 clients. I've also worked with the Utah Department of Transportation, the North Dakota Department of Transportation. I've also worked with the Utah Transit Authority and with the both airports in Salt Lake City and here. And I also worked on the Minority Women Chambers Coalition, which had 3000 people. And the reason I tell you all of that is because I know that there aren't contractors here. We have heard so many of them, and I understand why they're not here. We counsel people on business, and quite frankly, it's not a great thing for you. Be here with your business, with who you want to do business with. So what has been talked about this entire year is so true. Subcontractors are out there struggling. They're struggling with some of the things that you just want to go well, in common sense, we wouldn't do that. Right. So having retained each go for two years, I mean, who here could wait for their paycheck for two years? Not me. And that's what we're asking the subs to do. So this ordinance is actually going to make a difference on that. We also talk to people that their bond has been required to go for three years while your bond determines how much work you can do. So if it's being held for three years, one of the things that Councilwoman Black mentioned was change orders. Your change orders, if you don't have those documented correctly, you can kiss that money goodbye. So there's a lot of things that this ordinance can really impact. The other thing that's important is the implementation of it. And once you have the implementation, that training, that education and really understanding how to work, the things like transfer, like change orders, retain age payment, that's so important. And I know that this council, one of your goals is to really help with this ordinance to grow minority women, small businesses. And this ordinance can help you to do that. And I really appreciate you taking our community that seriously. So thank you very much. And I really hope you pass this ordinance. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Hayes. All right. I'll call you. Five can go back to your seats and I'll call the next three of the final three. Joseph Serna, Chairman Sekou and Barbara Myrick. Mr. Cernan, you were first. Good evening, Joseph Stern. I'm with you as Dottie West, southwest region, west central region. I'm the program director and I work with Keller Hayes. And the what we do is work with small businesses in our region, construction infrastructure, really, to help them better prepare so they can do the kinds of works that Denver is doing. I was at an event last week where Mayor Hancock got an award from the other mayors. I guess that partners for all the work that he's done and a champion he's been for small business and it's small business a term that we throw around pretty, pretty easily construction and we build. Ebbs and Bibi's and the DBS, all of that gets thrown around pretty easy. And it's hard to keep track of all of that. But at the end of the day, Denver has an opportunity here with everything going on, looking at the goals and the prime contractors that are telling you your goals are set to high, you're set to steep. We don't have capacity. We can't do what you're asking us to do too much. I think you're being fed a line. There's plenty of small businesses. There's a lot of them out here. But what we don't need to do is we don't need to take these small businesses all the way down to the ten yard line and then blindfold them and then take their blockers away and then take their support away and then say, oh, well, we couldn't hit our goals. Let's not do that. This ordinance, along with the people that have supported it and are standing behind it, have done all of the hard work behind it. Small businesses. None of them. None of them are asking for a handout. None of them are asking you to give it to them. All they're asking is just don't take it away from me. I work behind and off for you. I did my best for you. I hired the people that I know could do it. You got a quality job. Please stand behind me when it comes time for me to get paid. So the next project. We can do it again. And we can be that model. Denver has the opportunity to do it. There is no other city in the Rocky Mountain region. You got to go 400 miles in any direction to find any other city with capacity like this and with all the work that's going on here. It's a magnet to everybody else is trying to come here and do work. Let's make sure that the home team here can do some work. Just make sure that they get paid and let's not leave them out there and you have an opportunity to do that. But we can't put this together and not put training there. You've got to have training. We've got to have capacity at the top so that people can take care of it. And so the small businesses are left again short. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Sana, chairman of. Yeah. Chairman Sekou Blackstar is a movement representing poor, working, poor homeless people, senior citizens. Okay. Pray for me on this one, Stacey. This one might get me in trouble. I'm not going to do it. What we are faced with. There's something my grandfather told me when I told him that I wanted to be. A lawyer asked me, What do you want to do when you grow up? And I want to be a lawyer like Perry Mason. You know, because we grew up in that generation. And he said, well, let me tell you something about lawyers. The law. Is not worth and this is, quote, the law is not worth a bucket of spit if it's not enforced. When we look at this whole process and everything everybody said is true. And as a former executive director for the Baby Highest Point Community Development Corporation, I had the opportunity to rehab in the Navy shipyards in Hunters Point back in the seventies. And what I discovered was that there was a cultural process, a way people did, things that was ingrained over years and years, years. And in the process of doing this project. I couldn't change that overnight. Folks were stubborn. I mean, they were stuck on stupid Jack. Even the law said it didn't matter because it was corrupted. I'm talking about for real. And when you look at this process, we've had laws on top of laws. On top of laws. We didn't created DSB oaths and all of that. And yet they still don't do the work. Because it's corrupted at the top in the mayor's office, where you choose to look the other way because you have other things happening that influence your decision. Call em all in e. Y. And we're all stuck with that. Because that's the nature of the society that we live in is about the money and we have big projects coming on with a corrupted entity already in existence that hasn't done this job ever. And so as we was going through the subcommittee, I mean, I remember one of the guys who came in was a contractor that had the courage to stand up with it. He said the key to this whole process of minority business people, small business, is how do we grow them out of being small businesses and compete on equal level with the rest of the industry. And he said that's the issue. Where are the graduates of the program who are now out there competing? Well, there ain't gonna be none if you got what you going on. So what we need in this process is an independent monitor that can monitor this project with the current. Cycle. To this cycle. Mayor accountable for this cycle. Thank you, Barbara Myrick. You are last. Well, good evening. Excuse my voice. My name is Barbara Mark. I am the president of being M Construction. And so we perform electrical interior, build out space planning and design. And we've been a mwb since 2011. Two years ago, I encountered said, it's time for us to move on our strategic plan and city and county of Denver was part of it. So I must thank the city and county of Denver first for having a minority woman business enterprise certification. I come from Colorado Springs and so we're so far behind. So I applaud you for being ahead and entertaining small businesses and trying to help small businesses grow. But with that, we've had some challenges here. We grew up in the federal arena, so I think we do business very well. When I started with Denver, my bonding capacity was single ten and my aggregate was 20. But because of some of the complications of the policies and people, different agencies and how they do things as cause the hurdle for us where we now have 50,000,005 million single and 15 million aggregate. My, my, my concern is the change orders in the real world, work stops. You don't move forward. Well, here, work continues. And they want negotiated end. And right now I have a claim in with the city and county of Denver, and I probably will be going to litigations with the city and county of Denver. I think some people do the processes correctly. I think if they everyone uses text, Terra is very transparent. But when you have one agency that you know, one does it and the other one doesn't, that creates problems. And so right now, we have a job with the public works. Some things were in text era, but one contract isn't. And so for us to be taking is December. Now going into January and we haven't been paid from August. I think there are some issues there. I think people change the processes. I think there's this is a process issue with me, with the city and county of Denver and the people on the other side. We're talking about the subcontractors and the contractors being trained, but the people within the city that are handling these procurements need to be trained. My my daughter used to work for the city and county of Denver. Now she works for me because I'm transitioning out. And one thing she said to me that I want to share, she said, public servants, when you become when you work for the public, you become a public servant. And that is to help everyone within the community. Which means if we're going to if you're going to impose these here ordinances, then everyone needs to comply. The people that work for the city and county of Denver, also the subcontractors. That's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. It's my right on time. Okay. This concludes our speakers questions for members of council. See. That's when it's another. Just a quick question for you, Barbara. And forgive me. I just don't know. I never worked for the city, but only indirectly on contract. Do we. Do we allow provision or have any provisions when we do projects where there is a sort of fallback that you would be covered for time and materials? You know, if and when you performed work at that, you were directed and otherwise, you know, shouldn't because it's a change order situation and you need approval and whatnot that there's sort of this tacit approval that you would actually be allowed to sort of proceed with the time and materials sort of basis. Do we have any sort of thing like that? I don't believe so. So funny you would ask that because our change request was for delay and the city caused the delay. But now the city says our documentation was correct, but they're not going to pay the change order. So I put in a claim the other day. You were smart to do that. I'm I'm one of those. I'm not a rebel, but I will stand up. And if I'm the lonely wolf. In the wilderness by myself doing it to make sure that is aware is brought to the attention of others. I will be the lonely wolf in the wilderness. And so I just like I said, I just think the process is. Everyone in the city and county of Denver does not comply with your ordinances. They make the contractors and they make the subcontractors. But I don't think the project managers comply with the city ordinances. That's my concern. Any suggestion to us? So one of my concerns about the way we conduct business these days is we do we do a lot of task order contracts with different with the agencies which give them a little latitude. And so they'll go in, find out, you know, find a half dozen, five, three, two, 5 to 6 people that work in a certain in certain form or provide a certain discipline. And they'll give them essentially all the same task order contract. And then, of course, then they have their mini bid process and to let out contracts based on the task force. So we never really see who they're contracting with to what level sort of until all the accounting is done. Is there any concern that our process of sort of deferring all those decisions strictly to the agencies that they're they're they're they're not. I mean, is there any concern about transparency or how they're letting those contracts out? So I understand they're I understand why they do it is shortens the playing field. The RFP doesn't have to go out. The federal government, they don't they do it all the time. They have their May talks, their sabers, their I.D. cues and things like that. So to to have a task order driven contract, I, I think it's good because it does shorten the playing field. But what it doesn't do is you can have three contractors and they might only go to one. So they might have rules in place if you don't respond. Like we I have a on call with the city and county of Denver electrical. I have SB on call with Denver Airport and we just want to be DPS. But if you don't respond then eventually they won't invite you. So I do understand the process. My my concern is the transparency of it. If, if you don't know what your bid is, so they don't share that information. If you want to know Where did I fall in the process? They really don't have to share that. The city and county of Denver do debriefs. I have an experienced debrief so I can know how do I bid next time? What did I file fail on? Where was my number at? Was it too high here? Not without giving out the information, but sharing something so that small businesses can be more prepared to bid your work and to understand your processes. Yeah. Last question is Oh, here we go. Commentary is to me, yes, there's always a danger that an industry or particular industry or a group of players sort of have a corner on a market, could collude and raise prices. But to me, if the city were to actually have a, you know, clay, you know, make it very clear that their bids are open and will be shared upon request. Don't you think that actually would net benefit the city? Because then you guys would sort of know what everyone's competing with and what money, what dollars they're asking for, for for a particular work or not. So when. We, we, we, we've experienced some of the open bids and some people lowball to get a job and then they're change orders. I'm not a change to company when when we submit numbers, just a true number. That's what we think is going to cost. But if someone comes in lower than that, you go, Oh, that I really missed something or did a little bit. And now they're going to have a bunch of change orders. So then you question that as well. Sometimes low bid is not the best bid is what's the best value. You know, when you incorporate grain, when you incorporate let's do some value engineering on electrical when you look at those things. That's where the true dollars are, is not in the low bid in change orders. It really isn't because if they don't get it upfront, they're going to come and get you in the back. Yeah. And I think that's where some of this monitoring can can benefit is that we can actually, you know, we should be able to sort of discern where is it that our scope was deficient? Where or is it that the the bid I mean, the the change order process was essentially being taken advantage of. Councilman, you want to say those for your comments? That's true. But thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. Seeing no other questions. The public hearing for what is this now? 1324 is not close. We have comments by members of council. We'll start with councilman new being his bill. Thank you, Mr. president. Really proud of what the work we did this this year to develop this ordinance. It's just payment is so critical to the small businesses is just for their growth and development. We've got to make sure we have efficient, timely and accurate payment processes. And the enforcement issue is very important. We've got to make sure that dispose followed up helping train and develop. We've got to make sure that our payment practices are accurate and do whatever we can to assist the growth and development of the minorities in small firms. And that independent spirit of this bill is critical. We've got to be able to be able to represent their constituents, which are these minority firms and small businesses without any outside influence and pressure. So I'm really proud that we worked on this. I think we're going to really make a difference with this bill. And and I'm also proud that the mayor is supporting our ordinance if it if we're fortunate enough to pass it tonight. So I just encourage my colleagues to support this ordinance. And thank you very much. Thank you, Councilman, and thank you for your leadership. Next up, co-sponsor Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. You know, I last year, last I guess it was earlier this year, had the honor of participating in the council team and in the marathon. And I had the shortest leg and I was the slowest on the team. And I did what I could. And I kind of feel like that was my participation in this event. Hopefully I learned something along the way, but I also wanted to take my hat off to the four brilliant women who were with this process pretty much from the beginning, and Bennet, Helga Grunwald, Joslin Robinson and MAXINE Prior. These people understand this topic inside and out and were absolutely essential. And I want to thank Councilwoman Ortega has been involved in this for years and has been a champion for the small business and maybe we be community. But for me, you know, we we talk a lot on the dais and when someone is a point person for a topic about leadership and in my time on council, I have never seen more direct and persistent leadership on a topic than a councilman new put forth. In this case, I'm just relentless on so sure of the importance of what we were doing. He met with everybody. I mean, I know Councilman Ortega and I were in a bunch of meetings. Councilman knew was in a way more. There was not a stone left unturned. And it's such an important topic. I mean, it's a shame that we didn't have more of the subs here today, but we heard from sub after sub about losing hundreds of thousands of dollars, getting negotiated out a big dollars at the end of a long job as has been shared, large dollars retained for months, if not years. And it just became. Clear to me early on how important this is. So obviously, I would urge my colleagues to support this. And again, thank Councilman Nu for his clear leadership on this issue. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Next co-sponsor. Councilwoman Ortega. Thanks, Mr. President. So I first want to thank all of the folks from the contracting community that really took the time to sit down and meet with us and help us understand the breadth and the depth of the issues that they were dealing with. Because had it not been for that, we wouldn't have really been able to get to the heart of some of the details. And obviously, Helga and Anne and Jocelyn and MAXINE were were critical in bringing a lot of those people to the table to talk with us and share their stories. And, I mean, some of these stories are just break your heart. And when we have an ordinance that's supposed to be growing companies, but yet we're putting companies out of business that were going in the wrong direction. So, Councilman, New, you have been such a an incredible leader in this process to just move this along. And as Councilman Cashman said, there was no stone left unturned. Everybody that needed to be engaged was involved in this process and had input from, you know, the city attorney's office, public works, you name it. Every city agency that touches this was involved in one way or the other, including a number of folks from the DSB office who were very helpful and giving good input and assisting us in in shaping this, including the auditor's office. So, you know, for for everybody that's been involved, it's been a long haul. I want to thank my colleagues who have taken the time to sit down with with folks from the community and with those of us who met with you to to hear what these issues were all about and the importance of making these changes to this ordinance now and not waiting for the current disparity study to be completed and a new ordinance to be written. But to deal with this now, when we have all of the construction projects that are going to be moving forward as early as next year, that will ensure that women and minority businesses who do work on these projects are getting paid for the work they do that's been approved. And if we do that, then we're doing our job in growing these businesses and making sure that the the the outreach that needs to be happening from the SBA to recruit businesses to do the certifications for those new businesses, that education and training is vital to their success and survival. The compliance and the enforcement that that agency is all about per the ordinance. We need to do more ensuring that up in this ordinance will help in a significant way. And I know that the SBA added people to their staff, but in the 2018 budget. But I'm not convinced that's going to be enough. I think with the volume of work that we have, they need to be. And, you know, to their credit, they engaged a consultant to help them look at the agency. But I think they may find that they need to add more people to handle the volume of work that we're going to be dealing with over the next, you know, 5 to 7 years in this city. So I am a staunch supporter and just want to thank also my colleague, Councilman Cashman, who was a big part of this process as well. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Ortega. Councilman Lupe Espinosa is up first. Thank you, Mr. President. Or. I just want to say when I first came, called me in to sort of introduce what he was what they were tackling. You know, it was clear that there was a need here that needed to be addressed. And. But. You know, where where it was at and the sort of the size of the lift and the approach was was. I just didn't see how how you could possibly get to this point. And, you know, one thing I didn't do was doubt Wayne's resolve at that point. And it was it was self-evident. And somehow 14 months with now, I can see every every face that was involved in getting this. But I just I don't know how to say it enough, but every time I was presented with with updates on it, I was always amazed and impressed by how well considered and the resolution of of open items was was addressed. And so to to to you, councilman, new for for leading it, you've given a lot of credit to others. So to all the people that he's given credit, including my colleagues, Ortega and Cashman, thank you for getting, Wayne, the support that he needed and the clarity that he needed and the people in the room that he needed to get to this final bit of legislation, because it does so much of the things that that were trying to be addressed early, early on. And it does so in a way that to me can be readily captured and done and performed and get the outcomes that that were strived for from the get go. And so I just really wanted to give you kudos to you and your team for taking on this very important piece of legislation and making it happen. So thank you. All right. Jennifer Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. I want to extend my thanks to Councilman Cashman, Ortega and. Councilman Newman, especially to the group that was so persistent. I remember sitting in the in the first. Meeting and scratching my head and how do we fix that? When I sat in this meeting with Councilman New, it perplexed me. Because I knew. This was happening. I saw it happen. It wasn't the first time I heard it. And really didn't have a solution. For it. Right. And it's hard. It's it's a. Really tough environment. Because if you say. Something, you're blacklisted. Right. They they you know, the squeaky wheel gets replaced. And that's that's kind of. The dog. Eat dog. World in the industry. And that's how that. I understood it and that's how I got the perception I had from folks. And I saw it. It was real. And these issues are real. And so. That meeting was important for me. But more more importantly, and not surprisingly, it never ceases to surprise him. But this this is really not surprising, knowing that we knew. Had a solution. And we knew the council member from Cherry Creek. Was going to address. Once and for all this issue that our mwb is have been facing for a long time. And I thought, man, what a. What a great opportunity. If we can get this moving forward and to see. It become ordinance. And so, you know, I definitely think this is. A step in the right direction. There's a lot of other things that we need to address in this industry. There's a lot of other disparities, a lot of other disadvantages that we have, so to speak. You know, as a as a minority community, woman community, I really want to see a minority of more people of color who are in business, women who are in business. But I'm just internally grateful. I am eternally. Grateful. I'm sorry, Councilman, for your work, your expertize that you lent. And I've been long, long enough. And I've been on this council long enough that I'd be. Surprised now any more. At this man from. Cherry Creek. Is. Was our greatest ally in this this particular issue. So thank you, Councilman. We appreciate your. Your work on our behalf. All right. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. This concludes our comments by members of council. I'll just say that this is a great day for small businesses in Denver. So thank you, Councilman. Council people who have all gathered upon and thank you guys for sitting in this city council chambers and going through security, paying for parking. But you have helped an enormous amount of people. I do want to say that having worked on large legislation before, the real work starts now. Quarterly During the checkups, making sure compliance is working. I really hope that and I know that councilman who's going to be on that, but I hope the community really stays on that as well. Okay. Seeing no other comments, Madam Secretary, roll call. New Ortega Assessment. Black Clark. Hi, Espinosa. Flynn. Hi, Gilmore, I. Herndon. Catherine Canete. Lopez. Hi. Mr. President. I please those voting announce the results. 13 Ice. 13 ice. 13 eyes, 1324 has passed. Congratulations. Congratulate everybody for working so hard on this. I do have a pre German announcement on Monday, January eight, 2018. Council will hold a required public hearing on Council Bill 14, 2021, changing zoning classification for 14 2038 Street in the Five Points neighborhood.