[Peace] Champaign County Board Keeps Racial Disparity Study Money Intact After Citizens Mobilize in 11th Hour

Fri Aug 19 02:50:37 CDT 2005

As posted at www.ucimc.org

Champaign County Board Keeps Racial Disparity Study Money Intact After Citizens Mobilize in 11th Hour

By Kimberlie Kranich

Eleventh hour organizing Thursday by citizens persuaded the majority of Champaign county board members not to transfer funds allocated for a disparity study to a remodeling project at the Brookens Administrative Center that some say could ultimately involve hiring female and minority owned contractors. Instead, the Board voted to fund the remodeling project with other monies. The $54,145 appropriated for the disparity study to document county discrimination against minority and female contractors remains intact.  However, the disparity study funds must be spent by the end of this year or they will be returned to the general fund.

Board members voted 23-3 to fund the $75,500 remodeling project by increasing a separate budget amendment from $21,355 to $75,500.  Voting against were Chris Doenitz, John Jay and W. Steven Moser. All other county board members voted to change the source of funding for the remodeling project.  Lloyd Carter was absent from the meeting. Brendan McGinty, chair of the Facilities Committee of the county board, then withdrew his motion to transfer disparity study money.

“What we saw today was citizenship in action,” said Carol Ammons who along with her husband, Aaron Ammons, led the mobilization effort.  “Your voice will be heard if you go and express it.  This is a participatory government and it only works if we participate.  We have brought attention to government. What we’ve done is reinvigorated the rights of the citizen.”

The disparity study is not dead, according to Tom Betz, chair of the Policy Committee of the county board.  “The whole issue of the county’s employment polices whether we’re talking about the disparity study, whether we’re talking about the people we hire on a regular basis for jobs is under review,” Mr. Betz said. “We are required by federal law to evaluate our racial make up and sex make up every several years. That report is coming in October. So that’s going to tell us what our workforce looks like.  I’m hoping that there have been improvements.

“That issue certainly is before the Policy Committee,” Mr. Betz continued.  “My view is that at some point there is probably going to need to be a disparity study.  It’s questionable to me which study is the best. There’s more than one approach to doing a study. “ 

The next meeting of the Policy Committee of the county board is Thursday, September 15 at 7pm at the Brookens Administrative Center, 1776 E. Washington St., Urbana.

Steven Beckett, chair of the Facilities Committee that initiated the request to transfer  disparity study funds to the remodeling project, predicted that the movement of funds would be controversial.  It was.

Throughout the day, residents emailed and called county board members and a dozen attended Thursday’s meeting.  Throughout the day, residents emailed and called county board members and a dozen attended Thursday’s meeting to urge the board to vote against the transfer of disparity study funds..

“There must be money in our community to help develop it or it’s not going to be developed,” said Mr. Ammons. “And I ask you, especially those of you who oppose the disparity study, why haven’t you come back with a proposal to do something with that $54,000 that would have gone directly towards the black community?”

“I think this is not only inappropriate but something that goes against the wishes of the community at large and the majority of voters,” said Ruth Wyman.  “And I urge you to not reallocate those dollars for an area outside the issues that would be addressed by the disparity study.”

After hearing the public’s arguments against the transfer of disparity study funds and their doubts that minority and female-owned businesses would actually be hired to do the remodeling jobs at Brookens, Mr. Beckett said the public had “half understandings of what’s going on.”

Mr. Beckett believes minority contractors would have a better than normal chance to be hired for the Brookens remodeling jobs based on passage of a new ordinance, ordinance 744, known as the Pre-Qualified Vendors Ordinance that became law in April. The ordinance requires the county to create a pre-qualified vendors application and from that application a list of local vendors.  Three vendors from the list would be contacted first for certain county contracts under $20,000.

“And the concept was that those minority business enterprises (MBEs) and female business enterprises  (FBEs) here in our community who perhaps lack the capital and perhaps lack the manpower -  for whatever reason -  could have a step forward by identification of a program where the more onerous requirements would not be in place,” Mr. Beckett explained.

“We can’t say, ‘You know there’s a minority firm here in town, ABC. Mr. Inman (Champaign County Administrator), I direct you to enter into a contract with ABC so that we have minority business.  You can’t do that,” Mr. Beckett continued.  “But instead what we can do is offer the opportunity to have these people register with the county and have a project for them to do.

“This is a start to a step in the right direction.  My God, yes we all know that the county’s had a dismal record in having FBE and MBE business relationships and this particular project is a step in the right direction.  I think you all should support it.  Support the project even if you don’t agree with where the fundings coming from.  Let’s figure out a way for the funding to come from some place else.”

The public raised concerns that neither a pre-qualified vendors application nor a list of local pre-qualified vendors has been created. 

“Duh!,” responded Mr. Beckett.  “We haven’t had any projects. This is the first one.  This is the first opportunity.  If we had a list, we’d have people going, ‘When is there going to be a project?’”  

“We say it’s a step in the right direction but I say the proof is in the pudding and there ain’t no proof and there ain’t no pudding because there is no list,” said Patricia Avery, one of four African Americans on the Board.  “And when we say that you have to have a project, I don’t know that we have to have a project to open it up and start to pre-qualify people to go on the list. When I look at the ordinance, it doesn’t say anywhere that we have to have a project to pre-qualify people to put on a list in the event that we have projects.  And I think that they’d be glad for the opportunity to have the opportunity to put themselves on a list for a possible project.”

Scott Tapley, another board member said, “I think everybody here thinks that we need to have a disparity study and I also concur that if we’re going to spend money, I would much rather see it go to something like this where we’ll actually hire minority contractors rather than just sit here and talk about it.  That has been the must frustrating thing of this issue for me since day one.  Everybody seems way more interested in sitting here and grandstanding and talking about doing something.  This is actually doing something that could cause the MBE and FBEs to get hired.  The rest of what we’ve talked about is just talking about it.”

Ms. Avery and others aren’t convinced that minority contractors will get jobs as a result of the pre-qualified vendors ordinance.

“Why should they trust us that this is going to happen?” Ms. Avery said.  “There are no guarantees.  Opportunities have been out there for a long time. We didn’t need a pre-qualified list to give people opportunities.  But we’re going to hang our hats on this pre-qualified list and we don’t’ have a list and were gonna say the opportunities there. Yes, we know the opportunities are there but we haven’t; given them to people.”

“I think that we still need a disparity study and I was very shocked to hear that it went back to the Policy Committee because I never heard anything about Policy taking up this issue until tonight. I’m glad to hear its not dead in the water,” Ms. Avery said.

Mr. Beckett responded:

“Somehow Mr. Beckett has become the bell weather of this issue and somehow Mr. Beckett’s trying to kill the disparity study,” Mr. Beckett said.  “Mr. Beckett isn’t trying to kill the disparity study.  There isn’t anybody on this board that wants greater MBE and FBE participation than me.  I’m convinced that Mr. Betz will move the disparity study forward and will have a reasonable disparity study at a reasonable cost.  

“I won’t be a slam bam thank you maam which is what we got.  You may not like the process but that’s what we got when you took it away from facilities and it became your personal issue and the way it was presented to the county board and if we didn’t support the issue exactly the way it was framed the rest of us were just racists that’s exactly the way it was presented. We resented it.  We didn’t like it and this board which had a change a membership defeated that study when it ultimately came forward.

 “All the power I’ve got to end the racial discrimination in this community I will use it.  I will use it,” Mr. Beckett said.

After the vote, Ms. Ammons said:

“It’s not that we disagree on any particular issue its how the issue is handled and the perception of a dictatorship versus a democracy.”

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