Winston-Salem wants to raise the number of city projects awarded to minority-owned businesses.
The city has had a Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprise program since 1983, to give historically disadvantaged businesses a leg up. But the percentage of minority companies providing the city with professional or other services remains in the single digits.
On Tuesday, city leaders vowed to do better. They proposed a new goal of ten percent, and discussed changes to the program. Currently, companies either agree to meet minority subcontracting goals—or demonstrate that they made “good faith efforts” to do so—on construction and repair projects of $300,000 or more.
Under the newly proposed plan, that threshold would be lowered to $100,000. New penalties would also be put in place to punish companies that fail to meet their goals for subcontracting with the businesses.
More discussion on the matter is expected ahead of the Winston-Salem City Council meeting next month.