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Fort Myers City Council members listen to public comment during a meeting at City Hall. The council is scheduled to consider repealing the city’s Minority Business Enterprise Program and Local Vendor Preference Program during a June 15 public hearing.<\/p>\n
Evan Williams<\/p>\n
Fort Myers City Council is set to consider ending programs that support hiring local and minority-owned businesses for city projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n
City staff recommended ending the programs because they conflict with current or soon-to-be implemented state and federal rules. Currently, when the city seeks contractors for goods and services, part of the selection criteria includes their status as, or use of, minority-owned or local businesses and subcontractors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
City Council set a public hearing on the two ordinances \u2014 the city\u2019s Minority Business Enterprise Program and Local Vendor Preference Program \u2014 for its 5:15 p.m. June 15 meeting at City Hall, or as soon thereafter as possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Council members will discuss rescinding the MBE Program because it conflicts with a state law, Senate Bill 1134, that is set to take effect Jan. 1, 2027. The law prohibits local governments from participating in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs. It also requires city and county governments to certify they will not use public funds for DEI programs, which the law defines as discriminatory.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Councilor Diana Giraldo argued that rescinding the programs to comply with state law undermines Florida\u2019s Home Rule authority, which was enacted by the Legislature to give local governments broad self-governing powers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are losing our ability to use the Home Rule to take care of our own community and the people who serve in our city when we\u2019re being mandated to do this,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Federal executive orders also have directed federal agencies to end what they describe as \u201cillegal DEI\u201d mandates and revoke affirmative action policies related to federal contractors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The city established its MBE Program in 2019. MBEs are city vendors that are more than 50% minority-owned and managed. They were certified by the former Florida Office of Supplier Diversity, now known as the Office of Supplier Development.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to city documents, the MBE Program was designed \u201cto assist and protect the interests of minority businesses in order to promote and encourage full and open competition in the city, and to enhance opportunities for individuals to successfully compete in a free market as independent business owners in the city.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The city set a goal of directing 15% of spending on goods and services to minority-owned businesses, with construction vendors required to demonstrate a good-faith effort to support that goal. When considering contractors, the city generally selects the lowest responsive bidder unless an MBE\u2019s proposal is within 6% of bids for services exceeding $25,000 and within 7% of bids for services between $3,000 and $25,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The city currently has nine active contracts that include MBEs, ranging from landscape architecture to janitorial services, and received 46 responses during the past 12 months to solicitations that included MBE participation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
City Council also will consider repealing an ordinance that gives preference to local vendors on city projects. Fifteen contracts using the Local Vendor Preference Program received benefits during the past 12 months.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ending the MBE and Local Vendor Preference programs would keep Fort Myers in compliance with federal and state grant requirements, city staff said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fort Myers City Council members listen to public comment during a meeting at City Hall. The council is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,18674,87713,897,20907,124472,124471],"class_list":["post-295326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-diversity","tag-equity-and-inclusion","tag-fort-myers","tag-local-vendor","tag-mbe-program","tag-minority-owned-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}