Will CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett Ignore Grassroots Black Leadership Request For Urgent Meeting Regarding Blacks Inability To Apply For New $100 Million Dollar Food Service Contract That Has April 30th Deadline?
Does Mayor Emanuel and His City Contracting Department Approve This Exclusion of Black Community Food Manufacturer and Other Qualified Black Service Providers while doing PR talk of fairness to the legendary Ed Gardner etc?
Will The City Council Black Caucus Intervene and Speak Up In Time To Prevent this Major Black Business Exclusion at CPS?
National Black Wall Street Chicago (Rev Willie T. Barrow Consumer Education and Consumer Action Project) CALL TO ACTION by Mark S. Allen, Chairman of National Black Wall Street Chicago and member of WE-CAN, Inc !!
On April 12, 2013, Former Chicago School Board President Florence Cox, now President of the Black business advocacy group WE-CAN, Inc made a written request for an urgent meeting with CPS CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett with NO REPSONSE with the clock ticking !!!! (see actual letter below)
Dear Phil:
I would like for you to set up a meeting with Dr. Barbara Byrd-Bennett with the WE CAN Inc. Committee to discuss a moratorium on the more than $100 million annual RFP for the CPS food service management contract since bids are allegedly supposed to open on April 30, 2013, according to my sources.
The problem as WE CAN, Inc. sees it, is that no African American or people of color can possibly bid on this contract, which runs from August 1, 2013 and ends a year later, because they don’t have the resources or the organization to do so due to its size.
In the last CPS remedial plan where last MBE/CPS program expired on Dec. 31, 2012 one of the remedies advanced was to get more minority participation by unbundling some of the larger contracts, which would enable smaller businesses to make viable bids.
We are asking for a moratorium on the awarding of this contract to ensure that MBE’s especially African American businesses that have the qualifications and facilities are given a fair opportunity to participate on this contract.
The WE CAN, Inc. Committee is concerned that once again viable black-owned businesses will be left on the side of the economic road—businessmen like John Clark, president/CEO of the Reggio’s Pizza, who lost a $2 million contract in 2010 resulting in his having to lay off 40 employees who were hired from the community.
That was in 2010, but the WE CAN, Inc. Committee wants to be sure that in 2013 and under the new administration of Dr. Barbara Byrd-Bennett, which we have met with and feel is genuinely concerned about fairness educationally and economically, that African Americans and especially Mr. Clark, who has owned and operated his business for more than 40-years, get their fair share of the CPS contractual pie.
I look forward to meeting with you on this very important and time-sensitive matter especially since proposals must be received no later than April 30, 2013 at 10 a.m. Central Standard Time at the CPS headquarters, 125 S. Clark St, 5th Floor, Board Chambers, Chicago, IL
Respectfully,
Florence Cox
President
WE CAN, Inc. Committee
Chinta Strausberg
Media Director/Consultant
773.667.5165
https://theblacklist.net/
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