Not that many years ago, Guilford County’s Minority and Women Business Enterprise (MWBE) utilization efforts were all handled by an assistant director in the Purchasing Department who had other duties as well.
In the 2020-2021 fiscal year budget, the efforts to use more minority and women owned businesses were still listed as a line under “County Administration” with a cost of about $170,000. Last year at this time the adopted budget called for taxpayers to spend $385,000 for the full-fledged Guilford County MWBE Department.
In the fiscal 2023-2024 Guilford County budget, the cost of the county’s MWBE efforts will come to a whopping grand total of $1,566,976.
Last year at this time, the MWBE Department had three positions and, in the new budget the commissioners will approve in mid-June, the county’s MWBE Department will have eight positions. In other words, the size of the department nearly tripled in one year.
While the Guilford County Board of Commissioners is still tweaking County Manager Mike Halford’s proposed budget, which calls for the dramatic increase in spending on MWBE, that nearly $1.6 million number is certain to remain because the Guilford County Board of Commissioners has already voted to approve the five new MWBE Department positions that contribute to the huge single year cost increase.
The coming fiscal 2023-2024 budget also includes $450,000 to establish a “Capital Access Program” that will “provide financial support to small businesses owned by minorities and women, with the goal of increasing the availability of capital to MWBEs that may not have easy access to traditional funding sources due to their size, lack of collateral, or limited credit history.”
According to information included in the coming budget, the new program will offer grants to eligible businesses, which can use that money for things like “working capital, equipment purchase, inventory, or marketing.”
The program will also provide technical assistance, business counseling, and training to help MWBEs improve the management of their finances and “growth potential.”
There’s also an additional $100,000 budgeted for fiscal year 2023-2024 for “MWBE Other Services and Charges” to “fund County partnerships with community organizations in High Point and Greensboro to further support MWBE firms.”
Are you taxpayers enjoying paying for reverse discrimination? You voted them in.
This is out of this world. Oh to be a female owner of a small business. This bill if I read it right it will teach your employees how to do their jobs, it will purchase the equipment for them to complete their job, it will make it almost impossible to question their ability and performance. No grade needed for job performance nor accuracy of final results. Just think how great this will be for other minority business owners. They are coming to take me away!!!!
How stupid is this in any society!!!!!! This is another stupid way for our incompetent democrats to throw our hard tax dollars away. This fiasco is typical of the sinking of the titanic. It is just another boondoggle set up by Skip and his gang.
At this rate they have enough people to go out one by one and beg the minority contractors in to give away more money. If they are incompetent before ,Ten more people on payroll will not get them in to bid on a job.
When will we as people learn that these people do not have our best interest at heart. Just throw that money away,it grows on trees and there is more where that comes from .
Good start, but when you have a growing black and brown population, coupled with increasing HBCU admission A&T had (40,000 applicants this year )so many business minded people are coming to the area 5-10 million needs to be the next allocation in order to prepare for the influx.
city, you remind me of Forrest Gump,
Stupid is as Stupid does
Are you kidding me? So you want your taxes to go up even more so you can support a business by throwing money at them. What about competency and motivation to make a business succeed. You must be on Skips payroll as well.
This program is as racist as racism can be. Total waste of Christian taxpayers money. No one with a conscience would want to be a token participant. Earn it.
Not surprised to see the range of ignorant statements about diversity programs being ‘racist’ themselves or the reverse racism myth. I just assume this comes from ignorance of how the programs actually work or repressed bigotry or racism of the person making the complaints. These programs only focus on increasing the pool of minority and women contractors submitting bids. The government is still obligated to only accept the highest quality or lowest cost bid. Not sure how that is racist. But conservatives are not ones to actually care about facts when spreading their hate.
Now it can certainly be argued that the spending is too high given the limited results. I actually fall into that camp. But calling it reverse racism is just more ignorance from conservatives too lazy to actually understand the things they direct their hate towards.
Really chris “ highest quality or lowest cost bid, not sure how that is racist “. Go back and review the old jail demolition that Skip pulled from Samet. That was about the racial makeup of the subs who had the best bids Skip had minority sub’s who weren’t selected and wanted Samet to change that. It was racism at its finest
No reporting found from Hammer that verifies why the contract was terminated. The offical statement was “The Guilford County Board of Commissioners voted to terminate its Construction Manager At Risk contract for the Guilford County Law Enforcement Administration Building pursuant to Section 13.1.3 and 13.2.3 of the contract due to a change in the working relationship.”
So try again. I stand by my statement of how the program works. But I again, I don’t agree that GSO isnt very good at it and they seem to be throwing good money after bad.
And I stand by my statement, as a very good friend of mine is a project manager with Samet and he was on that project so I do have some info that Hammer doesn’t have privy to nor can it be released right now but be patient you will have to eat crow. And also it wasn’t GSO it was Guilford County
Saint Chris is a knee-jerk loyal Leftist who spouts all the Left’s talking points, but with extra vitriol and hate.
He’s like the SPLC who recently demonized Moms For Liberty as a “hate group” who espouse “extremism”. They’re a group of mothers who want to protect their kids from the sexual perversion being promoted in public schools.
And so, like them, Saint Chris accuses any and all who dare to oppose the perverted and totalitarian Left of being “racists”, “haters”, and “bigots”.
The truth is that he himself is a nasty hateful person. You can see it for yourself in his comments.
You openly admit to being a bigot against the LGBTQ community. The LGBTQ community is NO danger to children. The school system does not PROMOTE sexual perversion in school.
So yup. I stand by my statements about you and hate groups such as Moms for Liberty.
All you have to do to avoid those labels is let people in the LGBTQ community live on equal terms in our community. That includes acknowledging their existence even in school settings. If you don’t want to do that, then you should embrace your label of being a bigoted. I didn’t make up the definition of the word. And you fit the definition.
Best wishes.
Oh but I do want to let perverts live on equal terms in our society. I just down want them thrusting their sexuality in my face publicly all the time, and I certainly don’t want them in schools , corrupting and disturbing little children. Normal sexuality is just as inappropriate.
So I am no bigot, regardless of how many time you make that smear against me (dozens. hundreds..?).
Your predilection for vile personal attacks in these columns against people who disagree with you says a lot about you. Your hate manifests itself in the epithets you hurl at us : bigots, racists, haters, fools. You must be a very angry and unhappy man. I suggest you seek counseling. Then again,maybe you’re not mentally disturbed, just a jerk.
Good luck.
How come we as taxpayers have to make sure that a minority business succeeds. Why can’t a business succeed by hard work and knowledge. Just throwing money into another program is not the answer. How about competence and motivation for the business owner to sececeeds. We need to get these people out of office because they are draining us dry with their own agenda.
It’s the old adage. . . .giove me some money for my non-oprofit, and I’ll ensure there is a big get-out-the-vote program for their favored politicians. It’s a proven strategy to get money for any cause.
Chris I’ll just say this if I were KING for a day I’d deport every lgbtq whatever they call themselves or anyone who supports them to Siberia so see ya. Go break rocks you ignorant moron