To say is somewhat limited in the sense that construction claims, construction disputes, there is construction law surrounding that and what we have done is advocate on behalf of the smaller subcontractors to the extent we facilitate a meeting between the developer and general contractor we are going to do that. Where we can facilitate a meeting to see if they cant come to terms with the disputes and try to find a resolution. Unfochinately it isnt a simple black and white in terms of the construction area because of various claims, claim frz extended overhead and delays. Different fingers pointing directions. There is construction law in settling those disputes and what i daurm from our policy that isnt is roll we take but we take a odvocase role in making sure there is fairness and these disputes in some way get resolved this will effect the completion of projects and deadlines, right . I wonder if this commission can you know sort of institute some type of guideline when we grant contracts that this could be a item that could be included. I dont know. If it will impact the completion of our projects, we have a goal and deadline jz we penalize them if they dont meet it deadlines but if the workers are effected it is kind of athe effect is out there. So, it is just something that we as a commission could look at and it is under your purview but this is something that could be discussed as a policy and include it in granting contracts. And think that is something that could be looked at in terms of putting into the sbe policy and that is a matter for your consideration as commissioners. Discussion item. Im happy to. The item following this one is on the policy itself and you may be able to raise that we can bring that up as a item to be considered by this commission. Thank you. I just want to say you dont have to go through the by yourself because you got us and i think that when we look at contracts and i complaints, you know, we dont want to say open pandoras box on that, but i think there could be a way we can say in our contracts that there is a certain number of days subs needs to get paid and provide that and if that doesnt happen then there are fines or something and we can do something. I think you know us enough to know that we are behind you and we seek your advice and creativity to figure this out. I welcome that. So, i have a lots of points and ill try not to be repetitive. I agree with the sentiments exspessed by my fellow commissioner squz want to go sthrou questions i have on the presentation and address comment members of the public made. I just want to make sure when we talk about participation numbers, i kasked this before, these are payments or this is at the front end, right . These are all front end mptd we are still looking at capturing payments mpt i know one ways we capture payments is when projects are completed for thus far since i have been here, one project has completed which is oddly number the robert [inaudible] contract for 1184 street so we do have payment for that. I included some of that information in the prior informational memo but that is the method we are engaging in. In the onset of getting fully integrated within the [inaudible] program i dont want to jump to the workforce but let me ask the question, do the contractors on our projects have to report pay roll information . They do so they are reporting on employees, hours exset ru . And correct, why cant they report about contractors . In the construction part of it, that is something that is easier to implement and that what we are looking at is a comprehensive mechanism that would include all Services Professional services and that is something not in the illation because professional services doesnt have to report pay roll as a example so we are still finding a mechanism in that respect so it is administratively practical for staff to implement in a ongoing basis. The mechanism we are looking at currentry in terms of a immediate [inaudible] is looking at gathering all Payment Information as the contractors complete it the reason i think it isnt a good idea to get it when the contractors complete is because then it too late. Anyone who is a Small Business, im a Small Business person so now i feel the private sector pain when before there was a attorney representing on small matter is one of the things i did, i feel the pain directly when a client doesnt pay and also feel the pain when that client doesnt pay me that firm doesnt get paid unless i get paid. I move my own mountains to make sure smaumer company gets paid or push my client to pay me timely sometimes threatening litigation, it is easy because im a lawyer and get more movement, but that trickle down effect has to be in place at a very critical junkier otherwise it is true a Small Business will go out of business. As i understand in the Construction Industry the Profit Margins are very lean so you can already see wla it is pay check to pay check or pay roll to pay roll, one thing goes wrong or 2 things go wrong for too long you are out of business. Im very troubled by the testimony that there is performance, payment is to be had, payment is not received and when the issue is raised by the way, you havent performed well so lets litigate. That is ubsurd. Im very much in favor of sitting down with obiaushy and one of the reasons we havent done that and with lunar is when we were ready to meet they were out of the country all of them at the same time so for that reason we were not able to meet with them but do have it on the calendar to meet with them. That complate the member of the public presented to sus not a new complaint. I have been in the field for i dont want to say how long but over 25 years and that complaint is reoccurring. We have to nip that in the bud especially since we are private sector partners that should not rely on bureachyeracy. Lunar says they are not paying because they dopet have money we have bigger worries as agency. We need to have Payment Information as early as possible i think and i think i know what you mean in that respect because in construction when a contractor receives payment they are supposed to remit payment to the subcontractor within 7 days of the reseept so i have seen mechanisms where Payment Information is posted in the case of the cal trans, California Department of transportation. The difficulty we have here is we are not the direct owner of the project where we provide that Payment Information so it does require quite a bit of work in terms of devising a mechanism so we can get compliance and get it on a regular basis without undo staff time in terms of manually tracking and so forth i agree. That is why i ask a question of pay roll, if the contractors are report why cant they report regularly not at project completion but progress payments . Progress payment milestones be reporting. This is a progress payment made. This would take too much time to have this conversation here but think it can be done we are looking in that sense. Okay. The other question that i had was [inaudible] commissioner maundhair raised it. I thought we had a prompt payment requirement in the sbe policy. We do so it sounds like at least potentially one case is not being complied with. We have looked at the Payment Information from lunar to robert [inaudible] and maybe this is not the area for discussion but we have looked at the payments from owner to contractor and contractor to subcontractor and that seem to be relatively in place. I think there are other issues at play here besides just the payment from lunar to robert [inaudible] okay. We can deal with that in a meeting. Then in terms of the overall report, thank you again it is very comprehensive. One part i would like and maybe it is hard to get at is the non minority category in slides 6 and 7, one for professional service and the other for construction and supplies, when you look at the percentages you go to the non minority category and it is 36. 7 percent for professional services 26. 5 and as i recall you say this also includes women . I aologize i meant to separate the women category as well otherwise i was a little shocked that more than a 3rd of the Percentage Points and therefore the dollarerize go to the non minority category. Just seemsi know this is a Progress Report and not overall report but it begs the question especially when you look at the other percentages and compare them to the contract monitoring numbers that you gave us, it would seem to me this goes to commissioner mondejar questions, it seems there is notthere are not that many certified local businesses in the database that are participating orn the projects mpt when i do the math you said there is 1325 firms in the database and as i added them up, 220 asian pacific, 1111 African American, 103 latino, small number of native americans, i think you said 2, 30 subcontinent asian. I dont see the Women Business number, but when i do that math i think if i do it right that is about 35 percent. A 3rd. I can provide this next time in a slide but what i have is minority figures as a whole and this includes minortle women is 42 percent total. 41. 7. Non minority female is 18 percent. That is for our contracts . No, this is the database. The database. Okay 40 percent are non minority male firms. So, there is quite a bit of non minority sbe firms that certify in the city database. And i can get the utilization data next time if we can have that breakdown. I dont want to take a lot of time here, but the way i work if we rely on the sit a eof San Francisco certification rostfrr available firms because these tr the small local businesses that are available and they have their numbers or their pool broken down by ethnicity so there is something to compare against, and if we do that same analysis on utilization and also on number of firms participated which is what commissioner mondejar is saying we can see not only from a dollar view but also from a number of firms participating view how many folks in the San Francisco available database are in fact participating on the contracts and it gives us a better idea are we spreading the wealth. Are the dollars concentrated in a small number of firms for example. Why are not latinos doing well in the projects . Is it because they are fully acpied doing other thing frz the city. There are all kinds of reasons and questions so that would be important to have. Okay. Then the other question i have, on retaliation because i hear complaints of retaliation and there is something that makes my blood boil as a business person is claims of retaliation. What tools do we have to investigate claims of contractor retaliation. People are expressing their First Amendment rights to speak to us because we are a agency that meets publicly and next thing they are dumped or not talked to or not getting work. That to me is retaliation. Im pausing and thinking because i haveants heard this and dont have response today because where have to get that thought through the chair, good faith efforts and there is a description in the documentation, exclusion of certain firms does not seem to meet the test and definition of good faith efforts to the extent of the tools and contracts we have and violation of the contract for failure to comply and there are remedies within those respective contracts. Okay. Identifying and understanding what the issues only so we can intervene would be critical. Right. One question is do we have a complaint process where someone has a foormal complaint process like the human right commission does where the Contract Monitoring Division if someone feels there is discrimination for any reason, retaliation they can file a complaint . If we dont have that i think we should thipg about that. Okay. I know we arethere are a lot of questions, it is a very comprehensive report. I agree with the comment we should break out suppliers as well because i think they represent a unique segment of the Construction Industry and we are not picking that up. If the city and county of San Francisco has a 20 percent subcontractor baseline goal, it doesnt look like we are meeting that. I dont know, maybe we are. Anyway, that is just my initial thought. Not allall these percentages are in fact subcontractors . Yes they are subcontractors none of the generals are there are a few general contractors that are local and small but that is probably within thewe canthe percentages i had it isnt that significant. Then i take that back. The only other thing i see with the workforce, i [inaudible] 12 and 13. There is a reference to Western Addition project for workforce. Is there only 1 project in the Western Addition . 1450 franklin which is a residential project there is work there completed in 09 and to the extent there are remaining agreements or loans that are active then that speaks to our continued involvement so it is active owner participation agreement that is cuntsly under construction. It is preidated solution so now it is getting underway so that speaks to why there is only one Western Addition project. There is one rincon beach project, 72 townsened. The work there is complete but the project area is active to 2021. A number of other handful of projects like that. In the agigate these 3 projecktds in the other category for workforce are at 24 percent local . Thats correct, yes. It is interesting to see if wewithin Western Addition whether there is local residence in the in your attachments i think it was attachment b, b 2, there is a breakdown by geographical area. Ill take a look at that. Mr. Washington you may want to look at that. We can say more things but we said enough probably. Commissioner singh. We used to have a working group from businesses, Small Business and minority contracts and 2 people from the commission , i was one of them and mr. Morales knows we used to meet every 3 months and i think we should initiate that. Good idea. I think that is a good idea. Okay. I guess the only other one i have, i just noticed it here is given this is now our second report where latinos are barely at 1 percent or 1 and a half percent, i ask in the next report maybe take a close look of why that is the case. Ya when you look at the numbers and compare it to availability or population African American dollars are commensurate with at least the population, the general population and perhaps the contractor population, but the numbers are off for latino. We recognize that andin fact thesubmittals getting the information from the developers for professional service and Construction Contracting to see if maybe the area is they are not submitting proposals or bids. Okay. Okay. So this is not a action item, this is a workshop. Thank you for your report. You are up on the next one too. Please call the next item the next item is 5 d, authderizing the amendment of ocii Small Business enterprise for sbe policy to modify size thresh hold for Small Business enterprises to establish standards for joint verchers and associations to meet sbe eligibility and make other minor changes, discussion and action resolution number 432015. Madam director commissioners the proposed sbe policy amendments really stem from the last workshop and the feedback that you gave to us in the Public Comments we received in order toyou asked to look at harmonizing a size standward the city since the city made changes to their lbe ord nns and clarify the joint vercher squz there were other items we are continuing to review. This is a Progress Report and proposal for action on these key items with the expectation well come back after further review and study on other things you asked us to look at. With that mr. Lee director [inaudible] commissioners. The intent this particular agenda item is to look at amending the Small Business enterprise policy for the agency. The last amendment was 2009 where we changed the size standards for suppliers but now we are talking about amending the policy not on a substantial basis but add clarifying language and make it administratively convenient in terms of size standards, convenient also for understanding by the contracting public. There is really 3 significant changes with 3 changes we are looking at. One is the fact that we want to modify the Small Business size standards as mentioned in my previous presentationism the city of San Francisco has amended in the size standards, what is recommended is harmization. The second is look at clarifying language regarding joint ventures and association and mining Administrative Changes to the the policy itself. First the definition of Small Business. There is a size standard in place currently, those being professional personal services at 2 million suppliers and [inaudible] construction at 14 million. I do want to clarify the agency no longer performs certification but accept certification from other governmental entities those primarily being city of San Francisco through cmd and state of california through the department of General Services. Just very briefly, the city of San Francisco has implemented july 1 new size standards. These are the size standsards in place with the city. The sitee does classify Small Business under 3 categories, small l berks e, microlbe and sba, lbe. The distinction of course is determined by the Gross Revenue, 3 year annual Gross Revenue of the firm and the sba is the u. S. Small Business Administration and that is a federal standard for their size determination. The city does classify under also 5 separate categories under Construction Contractors especially constructors, suppliers, professional service and trucking so keep that in mind. What the state of california due to department of General Services they have a size thresh holds under what is known as Small Business and that is generally across the board 14 million in 3 year Gross Revenue with a caveat that the firm must have no greater than 100 employees. They also classify a microbusiness category at 3. 5 million with less than 25 employees or manufacturers. The state of california does certify Small Business that includes disabled veterans within the size thresh holds. What is recommended for this particular amendment is to really expand the ocii size standards by including or adding an additional category for especially constructor contractors and a category for trucking. These categories are industry classifications the city of San Francisco uses and it would make sense to add those 2 particular classification squz adopt size standards we can use that would conform to the city of San Francisco small lbe. We suggest the small lbe classification because those are the size standards closeest to the standards. What is shown is lbii Current Practice for contractors at 14 millions. What is proposed is small lbee at 20 million. For special contractors we dont have a category for that bought what we recommend is we recognize Specialty Contractors at 14 million opposed to 10 and that is consistent where with the state of california. It allows to recognize not only the city specially contractor category but any Firm Certified by the state. The intent is eliminate undo hardship on the business and staff. With the anticipated aoption we can easily communicate to contracting public that we can accept all small lbe certified by San Francisco and that makes the message clear and simpler to the contracting public. The suppliers are at 7 million and recommend adoption of 10 million. For fogezal suvs we are at 2 million, San Francisco small is at 2. 5 so we recommend a 2. 5 limit and trucking 3. 5 consist wnt the city. In terms of size standards, that is what is recommended. For joint vercher and associations, the agency has had a long practice even under the old mbewbe program in recognizing joint venture and association for the purpose of meeting sbes goals as if they were sbes and what we seek now is clarification of the terminology within the sbe program. The reason we ask this is we can provide a framework Going Forward to tell our developer squz contractors that these are the guidelines to be expected. What is being