District 14 Town Hall last week - Small and Minority Business

We had a great town hall last week with Chief Christopher Lundy of the Minority and Women Owned Business Opportunity Office (affectionately known as MBWOO) and the Small and Minority Business Development Office. Both are important! Learn more by watching the video on Facebook here, and on You Tube here.

We had a conversation about the word “minority” and why it is still used to describe these programs when this is a majority-minority city. Chief Lundy explained that while it is a federal designation, it is also a designation in our own code that we can change. I try to use businesses owned by people of color, but let’s see if that’s the right way as well.

Then Chief Lundy explained that the MBWOO office works to ensure that minority and women owned businesses have opportunities for contracts with Baltimore City. Minority and women owned business goals are set by the disparity study every four years, and they are not broken down by race like they are in the Maryland system (also something that can be changed). The types of contracts include infrastructure, but also supplies, technology, and more. Residents can contact their office to be certified as an MBE/WBE to do business with the City. His office also works to recruit businesses and markets the opportunities to do business with the City. They also inspect and do compliance to make sure the primes are paying and using the minority businesses like they said they would in their proposals. Back when I was the Chair of the Baltimore Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, minorities were not allowed to be Primes, and now they are - but that does not count toward minority business goals.

Director Taylor talked about the Small Business Resource Center and new portal called SourceLink that has helped businesses start ups during the pandemic and they will keep the portal even outside of COVID. The Center provides technical assistance for starting up businesses, advocacy, and one on one assistance.

I asked both about hiring Spanish speakers, they are both on the look out for Latinos to work directly in their offices.