A bill for an ordinance amending Articles III, V and VII of Chapter 28 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code by repealing and reenacting a new Division 3 of Article III establishing a Minority and Women Business Enterprise contracting ordinance in furtherance of nondiscrimination in City Contracts for Construction, Reconstruction, and Remodeling, and Professional Design and Construction Services; repealing and reenacting a new Article V establishing a Minority and Women Business Enterprise contracting ordinance in furtherance of nondiscrimination in City Contracts and Purchase Orders for Goods and Services and Opportunities for Minority and Woman-Owned Businesses and Small Business Enterprises in Procurements for Goods and Services; and repealing and reenacting a new Article VII pertaining to the development and utilization of Small Business Enterprises in City contracting and concessions. Amends Articles III, V and VII of Chapter 28 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code by repealing and reenacting a new Division 3 of Article III establishing a Minority and Women Business Enterprise
They were all right at the next screen and then yourself. And then for accountability for. This person, I'm. Going to. Be placed upon final consideration in defense. Thank you. It has been moved and seconded. Questions and comments by members of Temple. Thank you, Mr. President. I raised some questions about this last week on introduction and got answers, some pretty extensive answers this afternoon to a number of those questions that I sent to Audrina Gibson. Thank you for coming down the arena. And under these difficult circumstances that we're all operating under, I have a great concern that the prompt provision that's in this ordinance that requires the prime contractors, the general contractors that have city contracts of $1,000,000 or more to pay their AWB subcontractors within 35 days of that subcontractor submitting the invoice for the work. In actuality is shifting the problem of prompt pay from us because we don't pay promptly in every circumstance and probably in most circumstances within 35 days. Shifting it to the prime contractors or to the subcontractors under them who may have third tier or fourth tier subs as well. And so we're kind of making those prime contractors the bank for our city contracts. And Mr. Gibson has and her office has provided through working with public works and the airport and all the other folks to do contracting. They have developed a ten point initiative that is trying to fix our end of the logjam, if you will. And but I'm still concerned how we will measure that going forward, because my concern in voting on this tonight is that we're opening a box of problems when maybe we could have taken time to come up with a way to solve that before we came to council. So maybe, Mr. Gibson, without going into detail with all the questions that you answered in which I forwarded to some other members who were interested in that same issue, could you talk to us about what happens if this doesn't work? What happens if a year from now we discover that a lot of crimes who used to do business with us will no longer bid on our work because they can't afford, particularly if the Prime is itself an mbie or we prime acting as a GC on one of our contracts that they can't afford to pay within 35 days their subs and then wait for payment from us for maybe six months. If there's a lot of change orders involved, how will we know and how will we fix that? Thank you. Okay. Okay. Good evening. Adrina Gibson, director of the Division of Small Business Opportunity. This is a new norm for me. So excuse me if I'm a re-adjusting. Thank you for having me and asking for me to come down. And Councilman Carlin, that's quite a large question. So I'm going to try to answer it to the best of my ability, but feel free to reiterate any of those questions in the meantime. So I think the first question that you had was the concern around the city paying their crimes and your concern with moving this bill forward, which is directly related to Mwb, which is a small minority women owned businesses with regards to 50% pay. And so just a couple of items with that, I want to state that the concerns that have been brought forward with contractor prompt pay is not the same as city pay. There are two distinct issues that we've been solving for for the last several months. You had brought up the concern that if we move forward with contractor prime pay, which is to pay mwb ease within 35 days, we could be opening up larger problems, a can of worms, if you will. But those can of worms have already been opened for several years and for many of our small businesses. And we're solving for that problem by putting this contractor provision into place for solving that issue. As it relates to that, the city pay is our responsibility. Responsibility. It's our accountability as the city to pay our prime contractors within 35 days of an acceptable invoice. The contractor prime pay aligns with that. It flows down from the city to the prime to the small businesses. It's with no surprise that we haven't been necessarily holding up to that as truthfully as we could. But throughout this extension that we received in December, that's what we've been focused on more than anything. And even outside of the contractor, shoring up our processes, our procedures and our policy to ensure that we are, in fact, meeting the requirements of city pay and getting our times paid with within those 35 days. It's not enough for us to remove contractor pay. The contractor can't pay is just it's fair. We have city pay for crimes. We should have prompt pay for small businesses as well. And during that time, while we're implementing as we're doing right now, we will ensure that our crimes are being paid on time because we have been working diligently, weekly and work groups with all of the city agencies collaborating to make sure that we better we can better measure our ability to pay on time that are the pay apps and the invoices. And those reviews are cut in half, that our technology systems are shored up and moving at a quicker speed. Nine different initiatives have moved forward with the help of the mayor's office and convening all the city agencies so that we're working on implementing those. I think to some of the city council members make examples of those nine initiatives and the action item lab for where we're at with each of those initiatives. I just want to again restate that, yes, my job is small minority women owned businesses and we've been focused on that. But with that, we've also been focused on making sure the crimes are paid in a reasonable time as well. So we are aligned. It's just and it's equitable. It's it's not enough to remove it because of the uncertainty, but rather to push forward in these times and make sure that in a very balanced way we're doing everything that we should be for both crimes and for small businesses. But. Am I still muted. In your views that you'll have to mute yourself? Very good. Thank you. Adrina, could you address perhaps how will we know that we are succeeding? Do you and will you commit to come back to committee to counsel? What are the measurements? Because my understanding is from pay for the fines from the city. We start our clock when when the invoice is accepted, when we check everything out. But for the bodies, the clock starts when they turn in the invoice before the Prime or the GC actually can say, well, is all the work accepted, etc.. Are there differences between the two systems that we can try to align better? Because I'm concerned that we're required especially to smaller crimes. Even those who are be themselves might not have the wherewithal to borrow the money to pay their subcontractors while waiting for us to go through change orders to finalize costs and to issue them a check. What will they pay them with if it's not the money that they're expecting from us, short term loans? Or how are we going to work with them on that? So how will we know, say, over the next year that that this has been a successful effort? So to answer your first question, yes, I am committed to coming back to city council. And I know that Councilman CdeBaca had asked for us to also put together a plan to show and measure how we're doing with regards payments to you and their needs, as well as to our crimes and how that's being measured. And in fact, one of our initiatives, one of the nine initiatives that we're pushing forward is our Power BI dashboard, which will look at an agency by agency to see how quickly we are paying our crime within that 35 year period and what area of the flow chain is being reviewed, maybe slowing that up or what was the reasoning for it. But we are looking at keeping that clock on so that we can see throughout the many different approvers, if you will. What is the lag time and where we bolstering and streamlining those efficiencies. So we will have an actual system that we're working on right now in place to be able to look at that. And yes, I am committed to coming back regularly to make sure that you will see that these changes are being met. It's not just the job of this, though, but also of all of the other city agencies. And we have a system that will allow us to do that. Okay, Adrina, I would like and as long as the administration is sitting up here, also, I would like to see a report maybe in a year that takes into account the number of bidders on each contract so that we can see are we getting more bitters or are we losing bitters where we might have expected five times to come in and bid? We're only getting to two. So to measure that impact also, it would be nice to have public works in the airport. Give us that kind of report after a year, because some of the crimes are very concerned that that will thin the field of potential bitters by putting this additional, in some cases , what could be an onerous requirement. Thank you. Yes. And I would just like to state with that. We'll make sure that we put that report together. But I do want to just note that looking at whether it better does or doesn't fit on a project can be a multitude of things, especially given the economy that we're in right now. And to your other concern, which I've also heard from nine MWP, is their ability or their unwillingness to potentially work with the city. I just want to reiterate that this provision is nothing new. It's nothing pending as the city has it for the crimes. Our city has this provision and Zita has it on their central 70 projects. Many of these firms, including Mwb, are very familiar with this provision. If they've worked within this provision for several years, in fact throughout all aspects. And then, as you know, in Central 70 and small businesses who were small businesses and now crimes grew throughout this provision, it actually assisted them in keeping their doors open. And so I just wanted to state that for the record also that many of the businesses that we work with, contractors in Vietnam, are very used to this provision and have no effect on it, that I'm aware. Thank you. Thank you for coming down. Thank you. You know, a couple of other people in the queue and have a number or take a look at some really good work where you wanted to be able to. Give me an idea. First of all, Councilman Cashman, the director of the company Casanova, over your way. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lynch. I believe. Lot of feedback here. I'd like to start by giving a sincere shout out to our former colleague, Councilman Wayne New, for the incredible amount of ground work he did over a year or two in addressing a variety of dispo related issues with prompt pay for subs being perhaps the most important of the issues that we looked at , he was kind enough to involve Councilman Ortega and myself in discussions, and we interviewed sub after sub after sub that told horror stories about the lack of prompt payment, the lack of adequate payment from Prime's that had been paid. And this is a while I agree 100% with my colleague, Councilman Flynn, that we on the city side have the responsibility to do what we're asking our primes to do. I truly feel that in Ms.. Gibson, we've got the right person with the right background to ensure that all sides in this situation are treated fairly. I very much, again, appreciated the work that Councilman Nu did along the way. I'm sorry. He's. I hope he's watching tonight. I hope he's watching tonight. He deserves credit for where this where Dismas sits today, which I think is in a far stronger position than it did a couple of years ago. So I will look forward to both keeping an eye on Ms.. Gibson and her staff to ensure that our crimes are treated in the way they deserve. And I look very forward to supporting this tonight. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman. And now we're going to go to council member or take our. You can go ahead. Okay. Thank you so much. I first want to say thank you to Adrina and Jason Moore, who spent a lot of time with me walking through different provisions of the ordinance. Some of that was with other people who had many questions about it as well. And I just want. To. Get on the record a couple of clarifying points. So first of all, throughout the process, when I met with Diaz, both staff and contractors, both Prime as well as Mwb is this issue was brought up over and over again, correct. So now that we're getting ready to adopt, it is not the first time that this issue has come up. Can you just clarify that? The battery for this is going. Okay. Yes. This has been an ongoing matter for small businesses for some time coming on board last year. This was actually brought forward by many of the small businesses within the community, small and large, who brought this directly to the mayor's office. Many of the council members. And it was a topic of ongoing discussion internally, where we convened subcommittees through our business equity leadership team and many of the agencies and their staff. So I have a couple more questions from an article. We can't hear you in chambers and we got a quick look at the bison. So, Zach, I remember the first president order. And you tell them to switch over to alcoholism. Are you ready for me or. Can we get to your audio? I get it from my definition here and the feedback. So it was just as I. Give. Thumbs up. I think we already. All right, go ahead. So what I'm going to do is just kind of roll through the next three items, just very briefly, so that we don't have to bounce back and forth. I appreciate a lot of this is about how quickly the primes get their buildings in because if they're. Holding up, getting their billings in, then that's going to hold up them getting their their allotments on a monthly basis as it's anticipated. So it's incumbent on everyone, including the minority and the women. Of subs on a project to be as thorough as possible. So one of the questions related to the billing is we heard this over and over that if there is a question about one item on a bill that gets submitted by the Prime and it's holding up everybody else that has their billings in with that monthly allotment that that one item holds up the entire billing, not just that one item. And so I'd like you to address that. So let me go on to the next two items. If it looks like we have major issues with the prompt pay or any other provision of the ordinance, we don't have to wait for the next disparity. Study you all, and we together can look at making changes to the ordinance just like we did working with Councilman New to make the one change that was reflected in when the prime would submit. I mean the subs with submit their billings and it showed transparency in the billing process. And then the last issue is about. Creating the transparency that we need in tracking what's happening with on call contracts. There are some that end up having these goals attached to a project, but there are some that may not. And unless they go through the SBA, we normally don't see that that criteria. And I think being able to track that data is equally as important as tracking the ones that have the goals attached to. So that's it. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Councilmember. Go ahead. Okay. So to answer and further elaborate on many of the points that Councilman Ortega brought up. Yes. When we started looking, the first question was with regards to accountability and some of the information that we received back about crimes, building payoffs, which was which has and continues to cause I'm due financial strain on small businesses. Yes. The process for prompt pay is with regards to multitude of things. I mean, there can be the instances which were brought in by Councilman Flynn where the city needs to go through their checks. Checks and balances to make sure that we've received all of the documentation needed. However, there's also the case in which you have prime contractors that will hold their invoices from submitting them to the city because it incurs interest and they want to keep it in the bank as long as they can before they have to then submitted or the documentation isn't ready or someone's going on vacation. That does happen. Prompt pay for contractors so contractor can't pay as well as with the city. Proper pay allows for accountability on all ends to require the city is doing their checks and balances that all documentation is present, that we're living within those 35 days and we're moving the process forward. It requires accountability from the prime contractors to say, I need to have all of this documentation, I need to get it in because I'm going to be required to pay my says you're very soon. So let me make sure that all of this information is correct, which we are now creating checklist for our crimes. Let me make sure that the certified payroll is complete, which they'll receive earlier notification on if something is missing, as well as the accountability on the small business to make sure that all of their eyes are dotted and t's are crossed when they're submitting that information up to the crime. So, again, it's it's not enough to just rely on paid when pay, because there are other there are other issues that occur with crimes paying their subs outside of just the city potentially being delayed in paying them. And so with regards to all of those processes, from city to crime to small businesses, our nine initiatives employ accuracy , timeliness and streamlined process improvements. The second question that Councilman Ortega brought up was that if there's one air within an entire park, which can be several pages long, it holds up payment for all of the subcontractors working on the project. That's absolutely correct. In many instances, because of paid when paid, you can have one piece of information that will delay the payment of another mwb or another non mwb. So that prime contractor then is met with a situation of waiting until that issue is resolved or pulling that one piece out and then resubmitting the pay. It's it's unfair for the subcontractors and even their employees to have delayed payment for the work that's been completed because of another error, be it on the prime or the other subcontractors working on the project. And so that is an error within the paid when paid contractor properly means that it allows for that small business once their work is done. They've invoiced for it. It's been deemed completed and acceptable by the prime per their scope of work and their subcontractor specs to be paid and be able to have that cash flow to move on to another project, to be able to pay their people, to be able to put food on their kids table. And so it's it's just and it's fair. And then with regards to looking at the ordinance in moving this forward and in the future, seeing if there's additional edits that need to be made or additional rules that need to be put into place. We're doing that now. The ordinance is the enforceable language. Our rules and regulations will allow us to provide that fine line of detail as to how prompt payment will flow from the crimes to the subcontractors and what areas are disputable where we have leniency and flexibility. And once we come back from this in a year or so or the next disparity study, it will be able to measure all of that and if needed, amending any time between there. But the rules in Mexico, it really allowed for us to allow for that additional flexibility and detail. And tracking of the data. Yes. To my point, too, Councilman Flynn, we do have our dashboard that will allow us to track this information to see how we're doing with payments to crime as well as payments crimes are doing with payments to these. Council member Ortega. Are you good to go? Okay. All right, then. Let me go over Councilmember Lynne, if you can unmute yourself. I see you're back in the queue. Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. President. I know that some folks were mixing questions and comments, so I just want to make sure I got my comment in. And that is that this is an important program that will expire at the end of this month if we don't pass this. And I think it has a lot of challenges to this provision. This prompt pay provision has a lot of challenges to it. There's just so many situations, as Mr. Gibson has pointed out here, where it is maybe the fault of the prime by holding onto the payments that are received from the city. But in many cases it's where the city has not paid. And I'm particularly concerned about those instances, and this is something else that needs to be tracked over the next year or so as this gets implemented. When when a when a prime pays the subcontractor for a piece of work and then later invoices the city for it , but then the city might reject that work that's already been paid for by the prime. So there's a lot of a lot of areas that need that are disconnected right now that need to be reconnected. But what I wanted to say, my comments was that I will vote yes on this tonight and get this passed. But I do it with some hesitancy, as I've said in other situations where sometimes you're 55, 45 on how to vote, you're not always 100% not all these votes are 100%. Yes, sir. I know it's an important program that needs to go forward. We're trying something that I think is very risky for all sides and it has to work. Right. And so we want to make sure that in a year's time, in two years time, that we keep track of the right data, the right measurements to make sure that it is working. And it's not hurting us. It's not hurting the suburbs and it's not hurting the primes as well. One other reason that I want to vote, that I'm going to vote yes now is that I there are only seven of us here in the room. And in order to avoid any unnecessary problems down the road with any potential challenges to some of the members participating virtually, I think it's I think it's advantageous to us to have seven yes votes here in the room. And so for that reason as well, I put aside my misgivings and vote yes and just rely on the staff to implement these initiatives and get it right. Thank you. Thank you, councilmember. Someone to go to council member all. Thank you, Mr. President. I am. Here we go. All right. Thank you, Mr. President. I want to thank Councilmember Torres for her inclusiveness of the disability community on another topic tonight. And in that similar vein, I just want to put on the record that I hope that future surveys include the disability community. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Horowitz, in other questions or comments, we are going to move on to the vote. So, Madam Secretary, try this a little bit different. If we can make this work a little bit better and you can hear everything, if all of you are participating remotely and unmute yourselves now and then if you can just pause for a quick second. In between the in-person and the Outlook Room, I think our audio work a little bit better. Is that really? No. All right. Don't do that. Okay. All right. Never mind. I'll just try and go through it slowly again. So I'm secretary. See if I've been. There you go. When you are. And you. All right. You should be getting a. Black. Car. When Brendan can eat Soya Torres. See the burka? I go more. I was hired. By. Cashman. I. Ortega. I. Sandoval. I council president. Madam Secretary, please. Both following up through the 13 hours, 13 eyes, accountability. Your decision has passed. All right. Please put the next item on our screens and you'll be ready to put up to six to on work this.