Restler summarizes three takeaways: disparities, subcontracting data, and pipeline
Restler says the hearing showed inadequate results for Black and Latino firms, especially Black women and Latinas. He also highlights new subcontracting data efforts and the need to help MWBEs grow from small contracts into larger prime work.
I think I'll just summarize what I think was a good conversation, and I appreciate you all coming today.
For me, there are three key takeaways that I really want to focus on moving forward as a committee and working together.
One is...
Are just inadequate results in contracting with black and Latino-owned firms, especially black women and Latina-owned firms, where the numbers are especially abysmal.
Secondly, I'm really excited about the new data you're going to be gathering, and it seems like administration-wide effort to better understand how we're subcontracting, because there may be a good news story to tell there about how we're engaging black and Latino-owned firms that
we're not currently seeing once we have a better comprehensive understanding of the subcontracting universe.
And then thirdly is the pipeline, where we've clearly done a...
I think, admirable job of engaging more MWBEs in small contracts with the city, but that's not translating into our spend.
And so it's still a very small percentage of total spend is going to MWBEs just within the local law 174 framework.
And that has to grow.
And I really think a deliberate effort to engage the firms that we're working with that are performing well about how do we chart a kind of path forward for them to take on larger contracts
is a good priority area for the administration to focus on.
So with that, I'll say thank you very much for coming in today.
We really appreciate you taking the time answering questions.