more competitive. commissioner o brien: okay. it streamlines the process, as well. commissioner riley: can you explain the split order? the splitting? actually, what we re doing here is we re actually not doing any changes to the code as it relates to bid splitting. we re only reinforcing the fact that it s not allowed. so, you know, you might get cases so, currently, i believe that under current code, if it s commodities purchases under $10,000 will go to departments directly, it doesn t have to go through the city purchaser office. so you might see cases where you get contracts, several of them, for $9,999, so, in those cases, there might be something fishy, and, again, this legislation doesn t actually change anything related to that code, it just says that, again, it s not allowed. commissioner riley: it just reiterates it. commissioner clyde? commissioner clyde: i recommend these changes. commissioner riley: public comment? is there any public comment? seeing non
further discussion and you may see some amendments to that, as well, one is regarding the l.e.b. s.b.a. certification. so the city purchaser actually identified a problem where, in the application of the discount for commodities purchases, so we tried to make some changes to the legislation. however, we realized after the legislation was written, that was a little it reached a little further than we had intended so we might be amending it or striking it out completely from the legislation. the other change or the other item that might require further discussion is regarding subcontracting goals. the legislation would allow for subcontracting goals to be set by h.r.c. for professional services contracts and so there s some discussion among, like, departments and h.r.c. as to how we should pursue this so again this part is subject to further discussion. and then in terms of chapter 21, it s mostly technical changes and cleanups and creates consistency between the legislation
commissioner riley: i was playing catch-up a little bit. commissioner o brien. commissioner o brien: is the aim to open it up to businesses? it s bumping it up, because some of our contracts, it was $100,000 before, and and the idea is that, especially for smaller businesses, it s a lot harder and more burdensome for them to undergo the whole contracting process so if you raise the threshold, you allow for more informal contracts and it helps the smaller firms to be more competitive. commissioner o brien: okay. it streamlines the process, as well. commissioner riley: can you explain the split order? the splitting? actually, what we re doing here is we re actually not doing any changes to the code as it relates to bid splitting. we re only reinforcing the fact that it s not allowed. so, you know, you might get cases so, currently, i believe that under current code, if it s commodities purchases under $10,000 will go to departments directly, it doesn t have to go thro
and it would increase the threshold from $100,000 to $400,000. actually, back in february, we had legislation that increased the thresholds for construction contracts up to $400,000, as well as professional and architectural services to $100,000. so, again, we decided to pursue this change because it would create a greater ease in entering into multi-year contracts and would help create more micro-leb opportunities. the other thing the legislation would do is give the human rights commission more flexibility in terms of certifying firms that do not meet the 51% ownership requirement but have otherwise demonstrated that the qualifying owners have controlled the business. and this change felt like it was needed to address the complex ownership structures that some small businesses may have. another change is, it would change the micro-leb set-aside requirements so that the set-aside amount is not only based on the total contracts under the competitive threshold amount, but also
that really appreciated your presentation to our policy and legislative committee, and we had a really good chance to look over everything and i think the changes are huge improvements, especially the one about the ownership requirements, to make it more realistic about how complex some businesses are in terms of who owns how many percent of the business. so i think you did a really good job on this. commissioner riley: i was playing catch-up a little bit. commissioner o brien. commissioner o brien: is the aim to open it up to businesses? it s bumping it up, because some of our contracts, it was $100,000 before, and and the idea is that, especially for smaller businesses, it s a lot harder and more burdensome for them to undergo the whole contracting process so if you raise the threshold, you allow for more informal contracts and it helps the smaller firms to be more competitive. commissioner o brien: okay. it streamlines the process, as well. commissioner riley: can yo