Local Hiring Policy to be Reworked

At the request of City Council, last week city staff, local construction officials and activists met to discuss ways to rework the proposed local hiring ordinance. 

"The goal is pretty straightforward," said council chair Karl Nurse. "How do we use the city’s muscle in big construction project to generate jobs in our community."

Earlier this month, city council voted 6-2 to delay action on the local hiring ordinance. The delayed proposal would have required public construction projects over $2 million to have 25 percent of the work hours to go to Pinellas County residents who are unemployed, underemployed or apprentices. 

Nurse said it is important to come up with a solution that is the least bureaucratic and creates the least amount of paperwork.

After nearly two hours, the group came to a consensus to explore creating a local registry/database of qualified applicants and apprenticeship/training programs.  

"The city has a really good opportunity to act as conduit for the workers and the employers," said Jason Spears vice president of sales of business development at Peninsular Mechanical Contractors. 

Spears said it would be invaluable to contractors to have a database of pre-screened employees who have already been drug tested with their resumes online. 

He said this registry could become the "trusted source" when contractors are trying to find qualified local workers. 

Mike Connors, the city's public works administrator, said Spears' proposal should be submitted in writing. The city he said, would essentially be working as a job broker for the local construction industry. 

The group tasked with evaluating the local hiring policy also said what would work best is not a mandated policy to hire local underemployed or unemployed residents, but an incentive-based system.

Steve Cona, president of the Florida Gulf Coast chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors, said on all city construction projects, 10 percent of the money is held in "retainage" to ensure contractors complete the contract. 

If the city were to get rid of this retainage, if contractors hired locally, Cona said it would work better than requiring hiring local workers upfront. This would allow construction businesses to get more of their money upfront. 

"If you say you’re going to get a reward, or waive your retainage, that’s cash flow coming in," Cona said. "You can actually keep more people for a longer period of time." 

FAST, the organization that has been the strongest proponent of the local hiring policy, would be involved by going out into St. Pete and educating the community on the database. 

Rev. Manuel Sykes, who represented FAST (Faith and Action for Strength Together) at the meeting, said the organization is looking at ways to grow training programs. He said his job would be to make sure the community knew to get into the database because that is where local contractors would look first. 

One local business owner who did not like where the meeting was going did not wait to hear the plan proposed. 

Jon Stanton with Lema Construction walked out mid-meeting after saying the issue was local preference for businesses not local hiring policies. 

St. Petersburg procurement director, Louis Moore, said he would not recommend the often-suggested Sarasota local preference policy. 

In Sarasota, Moore said the preference is given to local businesses in the bidding process. Moore said if a local business is not the lowest bidder but is within 10 percent of a non-local bidder, then the local business has an opportunity to match that bid. 

If the local businesses chooses to do so, it is rewarded a contract over the non-local business. 

Moore said Sarasota is seeing the consequence of this policy by only have a few submissions after issuing construction RFPs because outside construction contractors know they are more than likely not to get the job. 

"It might sound good to a local vendor, but it’s not a good system," Moore said.