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City Bureau of Contract Administration outlines community-level contracting, local preference rules for public works
Summary
Bureau of Contract Administration officials described local business certification, community-level contracting benches for sidewalks and small architectural services, and metrics showing use by first-time and local contractors. The report was verbal; no action was required.
Raul Mendoza, assistant director of the Bureau of Contract Administration, and Linda McGlinchey, compliance program manager II, told the Public Works Committee on Oct. 27 that the bureau is expanding efforts to make city public-works contracts accessible to small and local firms.
Mendoza said the bureau enforces the city's certification program and applies local business bid preferences under Measure BB and the city charter when construction contracts are competitively bid. "If you bid a hundred thousand dollars on a project, you get a 10% bid preference, and now your bid competes as if it were a $90,000 bid," he said. The bureau verifies claims of local presence and business status to prevent misuse of the preference.
The presentation emphasized community-level contracting, a program the bureau developed with the Bureau of Engineering for smaller work packages. McGlinchey said the sidewalk bench launched in 2016 initially included 35 prequalified contractors; about 66% were first-time bidders and roughly 40% were certified local businesses. A new bench established in June 2024 includes 34 contractors, 68% of whom are first-time bidders; the bureau has awarded 10 work packages with three more pending. Work-package caps are set to keep small contracts appealing to small firms (sidewalk packages capped at $100,000), and a tiered architectural prequalification program sets a $500,000 cap for "tier 1" community-level packages.
Officials described a small-business academy required for first-time awardees, mentoring by engineers and inspectors, and results from a departmentwide project labor agreement that has increased local worker hires (about 39% local workers and 18% transitional workers on covered projects). Mendoza noted legal limits, including Proposition 209, which restricts race- or class-based preferences, and the city charter requirement for competitive bidding.
Committee members asked how the program could expand to other departments and whether the Office of Procurement's RAMP/onramp database is being used; Mendoza said BCA coordinates with the Office of Procurement and department contract coordinators and that RAMP has been useful as a marketplace for outreach and for roster-building in wildfire rebuild efforts.
No committee action was required on the verbal report.
The presentation supplied counts and program details the committee said it would use in upcoming budget deliberations.
