TO: AC Transit Board of Directors
FROM: Michael A. Hursh, General Manager
SUBJECT: Amendments to Board Policies 460 and 466
ACTION ITEM
RECOMMENDED ACTION(S):
Title
Consider approving amendments to Board Policies 460 and 466; Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) Policy and Small and Small Local Business Enterprise (SBE/SLBE) Policy, respectively.
Body
BUDGETARY/FISCAL IMPACT:
There is no budgetary or fiscal impact associated with this report.
BACKGROUND/RATIONALE:
Staff is required to periodically review and bring forth suggested amendments to Board Policies to the District's Board of Directors. In the continuous effort toward inclusion and diversity, staff has been monitoring the progress of District programs that are designed to increase small, small-local, and DBE participation as well as industry trends and recommends changes to both the DBE and SBE/SLBE policies as follows:
* Add language clarifying criteria considered when evaluating Good Faith Efforts (GFE) toward meeting disadvantaged, small, or local business utilization contracting goals.
* Revise and re-organize policy language such that certain elements are clearly identified policy requirements and where applicable are independent components within their respective program(s).
Over the past few years, the District has received multiple inquiries on how to measure whether or not a contractor has demonstrated GFE in attempting to meet a specified small business utilization contracting goal. While the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) maintains that GFE consideration is a subjective process, the FTA also recommends specific criteria be considered for GFE evaluation within their Best Practices Procurement & Lessons Learned Manual (October 2016). In order to best serve potential bidders or proposers, GFE evaluation criteria and a GFE procurement form have been developed and added to both the DBE and the SBE/SLBE Policies. It should be noted that the outlined GFE criteria was develope...
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