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Office of Business Opportunity outlines disparity-study outreach; stakeholders urge all‑SBE approach
Summary
The Office of Business Opportunity summarized community engagement around the city's disparity study and presented examples of how contracting goals could change; multiple chambers and small-business advocates urged the city to create a Small Business Enterprise program instead of using the disparity study’s proposed race‑conscious targets.
Celentia Hoard, director of the Houston Office of Business Opportunity (OBO), told the Economic Development Committee the office has completed a series of community engagement meetings about the city's disparity study and is preparing policy changes informed by that feedback.
Hoard said OBO’s outreach explained the legal rationale for disparity studies, including the Croson case, and clarified that the study’s quantitative conclusions are based on ‘‘all spend’’ recorded in the city’s SAP procurement system over a five‑year period while qualitative vendor interviews are anecdotal and do not determine the disparity calculation. "We wanted to clear up that the anecdotal data speaks to why individuals feel they are discriminated against," Hoard said during the presentation.
Hoard summarized stakeholder suggestions collected during meetings and online submissions: better use of the city’s procurement platform and dashboards;…
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