Memo on WTC redevelopment legislation, Nov 2003

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

training programs, promoting opportunity as well as high” quality'work. The legislation also requires the agencies to follow the current requirements of state law in establishing procedures to assure participation of minority and women owned businesses in construction projects in lower Manhattan. State agencies currently must establish goals for participation of certified minority and women owned businesses and, through outreach and monitoring, ensure that contractors make a good faith effort to attain those goals. This provides a uniform set of rules that has been designed and implemented over many years to promote fairness in the public procurement process.

Many of the provisions are designed to directly promote coordination and thereby to assure speed and cost effectiveness. The provision to permit the agencies responsible for infi-astructures to include the work of the utilities in their solicitations will permit the city agencies and the utilities to coordinate their work on street reconstruction and repair, eliminating duplication, reducing public inconvenience, promoting speed, and saving costs. Savings can also be achieved through the provisions on insurance, which authorize the agencies to coordinate their procurement of insurance by purchasing one policy to cover multiple projects, thereby saving costs in premiums. The legislation also extends, for lower Manhattan redevelopment projects, the procedures for alternate dispute resolution set forth in state workmen’s compensation law through January 1, 2014, when this legislation will expire.

The provisions also encourage cooperative interagency purchasing by specifically authorizing all of the public agencies to enter into cooperative agreements. Current State law authorizes such agreements in part and the legislation clarifies that such agreements are both permissible and to be encouraged. The legislation requires the public agencies to reduce the harmful emissions fi'om the non-road vehicles that will be used in lower Manhattan construction by requiring the use of low sulfur diesel fuel and, where practicable, the retrofitting of such vehicles with state-of-the-art pollution control equipment. Since the state agencies and public authorities have already agreed to these measures, the city agencies will be able to join them in the purchases, thereby fostering environmental safety in a cost effective manner.

The ultimate goal of all of these provisions is for the public and private sectors to bring to the redevelopment of lower Manhattan the same sense of purpose and urgency that they brought to the clean up at the World Trade Center site.

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