Fort Worth spent less than 3% of city contracts with Black businesses in past 5 years

When it was time to start his own construction management firm, Trelaine Mapp knew he had to base it in Fort Worth.

It was clear to Mapp in the mid-1990s, when he relocated from Michigan, that North Texas was growing fast, but Fort Worth was special, he said. Here, Fort Worth companies do Fort Worth work.

Since 2012, when he set out on his own, he’s grown Source Building Group from just himself to a management firm of about 20, in part because of city of Fort Worth contracts. As a subcontractor on the American Airlines Integrated Operations Center, Source Building Group helped the prime contractor meet a city goal to work with minority-owned businesses in 2014. About two years later, Source Building Group was the prime contractor on a small project expanding the Casa Mañana Theatre’s office.

“Fort Worth, to me, was extremely, extremely business friendly,” Mapp said. “The stakeholders in Fort Worth truly valued Fort Worth firms, who can build themselves in Fort Worth, hire people from Fort Worth and truly have the dollar turnover in Fort Worth.”

But Mapp may be one of a few Black business owners benefiting from city contracts. Though Mapp has had a successful relationship with the city, and doesn’t market Source Building Group as an African American-owned company, he said he’s acutely aware that the city of Fort Worth has a reputation for not working with Black firms.

A recent study that looked at how the city contracts with businesses backed that notion. The city of Fort Worth spent nearly $659 million on contracts between 2013 and 2018, but 3% went to Black-owned businesses, while almost 78%, to white, male-owned businesses, according to a report from San Antonio-based Colette Holt & Associates. Hispanic-owned businesses received 10%.

These dollars are vital for any small business, but especially for Black contractors, said Devoyd Jennings, CEO of the Fort Worth Metropolitan Black Chamber of Commerce. Oftentimes government contracts are the only large jobs Black firms receive.

“If they don’t get public sector dollars, a lot of times they’re not getting enough business to be sustainable,” Jennings said. “The private sector has not opened itself up to Black businesses.”

Jennings was not surprised by the study’s findings, saying the city had done a poor job contracting with Black companies for more than 20 years. Previous assessments, even anecdotally, had shown similar disparities, he said.

The city’s ability to contract fairly is about more than just equity, said Christina Brooks, Fort Worth’s Director of Diversity and Inclusion. It’s how the city props up small, locally owned businesses.

“We need to have everybody participating in the economy for us to, you know, create a sustainable future,” she said, noting that growing small businesses increases employment and drives up property values. “When you are investing in traditionally under-resourced areas in the city by encouraging entrepreneurship, what you’re doing is really kind of dropping an economic engine in the middle of that community.”

Brooks hopes to use the study to retool how the city thinks about where and how it spends contract dollars.

Disparity study

At first glance, Fort Worth appears to be doing OK when it comes to contracting with minority- and women-owned businesses. (The city refers to these firms as Minority- or Women-owned Business Enterprise or M/WBE)

After looking at five years worth of city contracts compared to databases of known minority- and women-owned businesses, Colette Holt and Associates determined the city awards work to those businesses roughly 22% of the time, but could be doing it 25% of the time — a small gap that Holt said was commendable.

The study looked at companies in Tarrant, Dallas and Johnson county, where the city does about 90% of its business. Census data, business directories and other lists were used to determine the number of minority- and women-owned businesses.

But a closer look at the study shows a wide gap between the number of available Black-owned businesses and how often the city actually contracts with them.

On a scale comparing how much the city spends on minority- and women-owned businesses with available companies, Black-owned businesses ranked the lowest followed by Native American companies, of which Brooks said there are few known to the city.

Other groups fared much better.

Hispanic, White male-owned and white women-owned businesses appeared to be getting an adequate amount of contracts based on the number of firms in the region, the consultant said. Asian owned companies received a higher portion of contracts than expected.

When looking at the contracts, Brooks said it was clear the city contracted frequently with “a handful” of Hispanic and Asian businesses, so the city should still focus on expanding contracts to other small businesses in those groups.

But Fort Worth’s low score for contracting with Black-owned companies is bad news. Not only does it mean the city isn’t equitably distributing work to the area’s Black entrepreneurs, it also leaves the city vulnerable to a lawsuit.

“Our perception out there in the community is not good,” Councilwoman Kelly Allen Gray said last week during a City Council work session. “How we roll this out and how we handle this moving forward will tell the story.”

She said she lost count of the number of Black and Hispanic business owners who told her they didn’t consider applying for city-funded coronavirus assistance, because they believed Fort Worth would pass over them in favor of a white-owned business.

Both Jennings and Mapp said Black business owners have known this for decades.

“African American-owned businesses, when they don’t see other African Americans getting work in the city — of course that’s going to deter their interest and motivation and to pursue work,” Mapp said.

Fort Worth culture shift

Mapp said a “cultural shift” needs to happen in Fort Worth, both at City Hall and in the business world.

For its part, City Hall must make a serious effort to catalog minority-owned businesses, understand the work they excel at and connect them with the right projects, he said. Contracting with a business just to check a box won’t benefit anyone, he said.

“If they get that contract, and they can’t deliver on that contract, that’s even worse than a company not going to work because you put that company in a position of failure,” Mapp said.

Small businesses, including Black-owned companies, must move out of their silos, he said. Mapp said he owes much of his success to relationships he’s built in the industry and with the city.

Holt, the consultant who prepared the disparity study, also noted that better networking between private businesses would help minority- and women-owned operations.

The Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, the Metropolitan Black Chamber and the Fort Worth Hispanic Chamber entered into an agreement last year to begin sharing resources, said Brandom Gengelbach, Fort Worth Chamber CEO. The agreement isn’t legally binding, but symbolizes the three chambers’ commitment to working together, he said.

An event in February brought representatives from Lockheed Martin, Bell, Charles Schwab and Fidelity together with senior members of the area’s Black business world. Gengelbach said he was surprised to learn how little major companies knew about the city’s minority-owned businesses. Similar events are in the works, he said.

The chambers are also working on a robust directory of women and minority-owned businesses, he said.

“The pressure can’t be all on the city to have equitable contracting. The private business sector needs to do our part,“ Gengelbach said. “I think we are on our way to making some serious headway, but we need to take action so people can see it’s not just talk.”

Jennings, the Black Chamber CEO, agreed, saying the private sector needed to support itself better.

The city should be doing more to identify businesses that are ready to grow, and helping them scale up, he said. Besides barbershops and salons, Jennings said he could think of just three African-American businesses that have more than 10 employees, calling it “a sad situation.”

While the focus of public sector contracts is often on construction jobs, Jennings said most Black Chamber members are white collar employers like accountants and human resource firms. He wondered aloud why the city didn’t turn to Black companies when it needed professional services.

Jennings said an easy way to achieve fairer contracting could be through incentives or penalties for City Hall officials.

“If there’s no reason for them to make a change, you’re just going to have more of the same,” Jennings said.

City Hall changes

Some changes are happening at the city level, said Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price.

“Fort Worth has made great strides in regard to MWBE contracts and supporting our local businesses — and we plan to continue to do so even more aggressively,” she said in a statement.

A team of six city employees experienced in business diversity in the economic development office will move to the Diversity and Inclusion Department, Brooks said. In the past they focused on numbers: setting contract goals and ensuring the right percentage of city dollars were spent with minority- and women-owned businesses. She said she wants them intimately involved in the contracting process from the beginning. The city plans projects at least a year out. That’s when departments need to start thinking about equitable contracting, she said.

Through the Economic Development office and partnerships with area chambers of commerce and workforce programs, the city has several resources for small businesses. Information about the programs, which include access to small business loans and training programs, can be found by visiting the Fort Worth Business Assistance Center at 1150 South Freeway, Suite 106, by calling 817-392-2622.

These programs need to be expanded and marketed better, Brooks said. Many small businesses, regardless of who owns them, may not know about the resources or they may feel the city can’t or won’t help them, she said. Some minority or women-owned businesses may have tried contracting with the city in the past and not made the final cut.

“This is sort of a new day,” Brooks said. “We want to encourage them to try Fort Worth again.”

The City Council in August will vote on a new ordinance designed to clarify the city’s goals for equitable contracting.

Councilwoman Gyna Bivens spoke bluntly on June 16.

“Just make it happen,” she said.

This story was originally published June 22, 2020 at 11:50 AM.