Small businesses may be able to more easily participate in a city-run program that offers them the opportunity to work on large-scale projects.
“The goal of the program is inclusion, and opportunity for small businesses,” said Amanda McGennis, chair of the Small Business Enterprise Oversight Committee. “Some people have a barrier to entry because the certification is difficult for them. They may not have a financial person on their payroll.”
The Small Business Enterprise program is a tool to make sure that small businesses located in Maricopa County receive work from the city if they meet certain requirements.
Currently, any project that receives funding from the federal government requires a percentage of work to be done by small firms – those owned by individuals making less than $1.32 million annually, said Kini Knudson, a city engineer with the Street Transportation Department.
“Small businesses have been involved in every major project in Phoenix: light rail, the Sheraton, the courthouse tower, [University of Phoenix] stadium,” said Ricardo Carlo, representing the Associated Minority Contractors of America.
In order for the business to be eligible to receive work from the city, they must be certified, a process that takes up to 10 weeks, Knudson said.
The committee discussed the possibility of switching its process from certifying businesses before they are approved to receive work to creating a registration process, which would make them instantly eligible.
“With certification, there’s administrative review, an investigation if you will,” Knudson said. “In registration, it is basically a person answering all the questions on the registration form, and signing and attesting that those are facts, and that they meet the net worth requirement.”
In the current program a small business must provide all the supporting documentation, but with the proposed modification of the program, they would only have to provide an affidavit that they were eligible.
The purpose of this modification would hopefully be to attract more small business to register by streamlining the process for eligibility. Knudson said this should increase the number of firms participating in the program.
“I believe it will attract people because of the simple ease of it,” he said.
Currently, firms remain eligible for city work only if they provide updates proving they are still eligible. However, with the proposed registration method, firms would remain eligible unless audited randomly or because of complaints.
Registering in the program doesn’t guarantee work, said Crystal Castrogiovanni with Phoenix Pipelines, Inc. She said that there was already a limited amount of work available for the firms already certified under the current system.
“Does it benefit the program to have more people in the program?” she asked. “It actually hurts the people who are currently doing it correctly if we flood it with more people. The more people we add, the more their chances of getting work is diluted.”
Despite the possible negative effects that adding new firms to the program might have, the purpose of the program is to make sure as many people are eligible to receive work as possible, McGennis said.
“This at least gets their feet on the ground,” she said. “It might just be the entry they need to get them to that next step. Yes it might be flooding the program with people who potentially don’t know how to do this type of work, but inclusion is one of the primary tenants of the program.”
Contact the reporter at Jzbuntin@asu.edu.
