Toledo (OH) Study Finds City On The Right Path To Diverse Hiring

A Griffin & Strong, P.C. disparity study identifies where the City of Toledo, Ohio succeeds in its efforts to provide diversity in contracting, and points to places where the city can improve.

The Toledo Blade reports that while the study found that the city does a good job of hiring women- and minority-owned contractors, there is still room for improvement.

Among the 12 recommendations made by the study, steps to create jobs with a smaller scope of work, by either “unbundling” contract bids or the implementation of a small business shelter program, provide more opportunities for small businesses without having to compete against larger companies for contracts, Senior Project Manager and GSPC Consulting Director Michele Jenkins told the Blade.

“Instead of having big contracts, it’s trying to see those places where you can unbundle so particularly small businesses can participate in procurement processes,” Jenkins said. “That was one of the complaints we heard over and over again from firms, is that there was a difficulty in bidding from small businesses against large businesses, who they felt they could not compete with.”

City officials have already begun to implement some of the GSPC recommendations, the Blade reports.

The study reviewed contracting practices with the city over a five-year period from 2016 to 2020.

Read the full article from the Toledo Blade.