Work, it is said, comes before play. And the construction of a recreation center comes before the community can enjoy the facility.
In St. Louis, when a construction project involves public funds or subsidy, guaranteed inclusion of minorities and women – in contracts and, to some extent, on the workforce – comes before groundbreaking.
That is where the construction of the new O’Fallon Park Recreation Center has stalled before the contract got signed with the lowest-bidding contractor who will most likely build it.
On one side of the impasse stands an energized black caucus of the Board of Aldermen. On the other side is what members of the black caucus see as a compromised contracting process managed by the City of St. Louis.
The fight started during the process of vetting the lowest-bid ($16.5 million) contract submitted by SM Wilson & Co. A number of questions about the contract were raised by a compliance officer in the City’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) office, the agency charged with enforcing the City’s minority inclusion policies.
Upon inspection, according to sources close to the matter, some of the minority subcontractor bids SM Wilson submitted appeared to have been recycled from another contractor’s previous bid package, based on erasures on the documents.
Scott Wilson, president of SM Wilson, told The American that everything in the company’s bid package was legitimate. In some cases, he said, companies bid on “multiple scopes” and then the contractors may have used White Out to erase the aspects of the job for which they were refused, leaving only the parts of their bid that were accepted.
Black caucus members, including Ald. Greg Carter, Ald. Marlene Davis and Ald. Antonio D. French, also raised questions about the legitimacy of Wilson’s minority inclusion numbers, based on discussions with the compliance officer. They expressed these concerns in meetings with Board of Public Service President Richard Bradley and Deputy Mayor for Development Barb Geisman, both appointees of Mayor Francis G. Slay. They were taken aback by the administration’s response.
Rather than investigate the issues raised by the aldermen, Geisman attempted to ram the deal through, the aldermen said. “We’re going to have these kinds of issues with any general contractor,” she said, according to Carter.
A message was left for Geisman with an assistant in the Mayor’s Office on Tuesday, but she had not returned the call by press time.
Geisman’s response did not go over well with many black caucus members, including French, in whose 21st Ward the recreation center will be built.
“If it is true that we will have these kinds of problems with any majority general contractor, it is only because the City has never taken a strong stand on the side of minority inclusion,” French said.
The DBE compliance officer told the aldermen that Bradley, the BPS president, had told her she should not directly contact the minority vendors listed as subcontractors; instead, she should direct all questions about the bid package directly to SM Wilson.
Bradley denied this was true and told The American he had denied it in a conference call with the compliance officer, and she offered no rebuttal. The compliance officer’s phone at the airport rang without being answered yesterday morning.
“It’s not my place to make that comment,” Bradley said. “She doesn’t work for me. I could tell her to stand on her head and take a walk, it wouldn’t make any difference.”
The ‘bully’ and the principal
When black caucus members objected to moving forward with executing the contract with SM Wilson before the minority inclusion numbers were thoroughly investigated, Geisman arranged a series of conference calls with the minority vendors. In each call, however, a minority subcontractor was asked about their business relation with SM Wilson – but with a representative from the majority contractor on the line.
French said, “To us, that’s like being called into the principal’s office and being asked to tell on the bully – with the bully right there in the office with you. You know that if you say the wrong thing, as soon as you leave that office, he’s gonna kick your ass.”
Of course, the violent metaphor is only a metaphor. The suggestion is that majority contractors hold powerful leverage over the minority subcontractors who compete to work on their jobs. And that leverage compromises the ability of a subcontractor to be completely candid about a contractor in his presence.
Wilson said his company actually has more working relationships with minority contractors than the numbers reflect, because the DBE office only counts as MBE contractors those that are certified with the Airport Authority.
Wilson said, “There are people I am going to use that won’t even count as minority inclusion because they don’t give a (care) about the Airport.”
Also included on these conference calls was a project manager from Kwame Building Group, Anthony Arnold. A construction management firm, Kwame is one of the minority-owned businesses selected for inclusion on the job, though the contract remains unsigned.
The black aldermen were taken aback by Arnold’s input. They felt he was cheerleading the deal and encouraging the aldermen to support it. “He sounded just like Barb Geisman,” Carter said of Arnold.
Tony Thompson, CEO of Kwame, said the aldermen misunderstood his company’s role on the job if they expected them to be focusing on minority compliance.
“I agree the aldermen should be asking hard, tough questions, but we don’t want to misconstrue what our role is,” Thompson said.
“First and foremost, our responsibility is to the City of St Louis and the taxpayers so they don’t pay a dollar more than they have to or get screwed by poor design or workmanship. We don’t want less for this facility – especially on the North Side.”
Thompson said closing the deal on the contract was indeed a priority, because in “less than 60 days” Wilson’s offer would expire, it was “substantially lower” than other offers – and by now Wilson knew the numbers he had beat.
“I am trying to fight the argument that it costs more to do business with minorities,” Thompson said. “If you end up choosing a higher bid because it is perceived they have higher minority participation, isn’t that what you are doing?”
Workforce math
As the aldermen continue to investigate this bid and the City’s process for vetting it, Geisman has left them with some math to consider. She wants them to accept 24 percent MBE and 8 percent WBE inclusion on the subcontractor side, and 20 percent city residents in the workforce.
The black caucus does not like that math.
Wilson sees this contract coming under intense scrutiny, in part, because this is the first project of scale contracted by the City since the aldermen passed Board Bill 75, setting workforce inclusion goals. “The aldermen are trying to build Rome in one day,” Wilson said.
The aldermen say they are just trying to keep public money in their own community. And 20 percent of city residents on this job is not enough for them.
French said, “In this economy, with this degree of unemployment, that is 80 percent of the workers – on a City-financed project in the city – who don’t even live in the city. That just isn’t right.”
Carter said, “We are talking a job in the heart of North St. Louis, when unemployment is at an all-time high.”