In an effort to follow through on a promise to make it easier for local small, minority-owned and disadvantaged businesses to participate in city-parish contracts, Mayor Sharon Weston Broome’s administration has released a forecast of all bids that will be issued for the rest of the year.
The bid forecast list—129 in all—was presented March 29 to nearly 100 small business owners at an equity in business seminar, the first of four the administration has planned around the parish in the coming weeks.
Assistant Chief Administrative Officer Veneeth Iyengar says one of the biggest challenges small businesses face when trying to bid on government contracts is inadequate time to prepare. To address that challenge, the administration in recent weeks asked all parish departments to pull together a list of bids they anticipate issuing in 2018.
The response at the March 29 meeting was overwhelmingly positive, says Metro Councilman Buddy Amoroso, in whose district the meeting was held.
“They were expecting 50 people,” he says. “We had almost 100, mostly young entrepreneurs. It was a very diverse crowd and a very positive energy.”
In addition to the bid forecast, attendees at the meeting received information on how to register with the city-parish so they are eligible to compete for government contracts. Most of those in attendance have never done business with the city-parish before, which Iyengar says is good because the administration is trying to diversify the firms with which it contracts.
While the diversity in small business seminars are underway, the administration is also contracting with a consulting firm to study how often government contracts are awarded to local small businesses as well as businesses owned by women, minorities and veterans.
Earlier this year, the Metro Council approved $300,000 to fund a consulting contract to conduct the study. Amoroso says he pushed to add language that includes small businesses in the study, which originally was going to only look at the participation rate of women-, minority- and veteran-owned businesses.
Amoroso says the March 29 gathering—which came on the eve of Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul’s announcement concerning the fate of the officers involved in the 2016 Alton Sterling shooting—was one of the more positive and unifying events in Baton Rouge in a long time.
“It was nice to be at a public meeting with no mention of Alton Sterling and no mention of St. George,” Amoroso says. “It was a diverse, overflow crowd all talking about business and how to do business with the city.”
