BUFFALO, N.Y. — 2 On Your Side has learned the New Stadium Inclusion Task Force is no more. Erie County Legislature Chairwoman April Baskin announced Tuesday afternoon that it has adjourned after serving its purpose.
Baskin says that within an hour of sending a letter to the Turner Construction Company on Friday outlining concerns she had about making sure enough women, minorities, and disabled veterans were being hired to work on the stadium, she got a phone call from its CEO.
They talked about her concerns and she learned that nearly 80 firms from marginalized populations have been part of the process so far and half of those firms are from Western New York.
So on Tuesday, she announced that the task force is no more.
But its work will be continued by the Community Benefits Oversight Committee created by the Community Benefits Agreement last year.
It will oversee the agreement and it met for the first time Monday morning. It's made up of nine members. Two are appointed by Baskin.
"We usually see people just trying to meet the work force goals and the subcontractor goals, but we're blowing the roof off of this project and we've got a lot of eyes on making sure that it's going to be done right and the residents of Erie County benefit, so I'm sure that the Bills are going to stay plugged into doing the right thing like they've done so far. We've got the Community Benefits Oversight Committee, they finally had their first meeting, and we have Developments by JEM who is working on the community outreach," said April Baskin, Erie County Legislature Chairwoman.
"We talk about being the City of Good Neighbors. Good Neighbors don't look like one person or another. We're all different colors. We're all different ages, sizes, so it's important that we are inclusive because our community needs to reflect that in order for us to continue to survive and to grow through the next generations to come," said Janice McKinnie, Owner and President of Developments by JEM.
Janice McKinnie owns the firm Developments by JEM which will oversee the agreement along with the oversight committee. It's a local project management company. McKinnie says the Community Benefits Oversight Committee is still working out exactly how it will work with her firm, but she says that work will have a lasting impact beyond the time it takes to build the stadium.
"I'm Buffalo born and raised, schooled and everything, so I've seen the transitions that our community and Western New York has gone through," said Janice McKinnie.
The Community Benefits Agreement stipulates that 30-percent of the construction team for the stadium is made up of local minority or women-owned businesses.
"One of our strategies is to look at, you know, some of the benefits or the opportunities that people in our community have been able to participate in because of this project, so that's some of the rollout that we're going to do. Making sure that we kind of give these success stories of, hey, this happened, and this is someone who has benefited from them," said Janice McKinnie.
The Community Benefits Agreement also says 30-percent of the companies hired to maintain and operate the stadium after construction must be be minority or women-owned.
"We wanted to make sure that some of the non-construction related work, like professional services, there were million dollar contracts allocated to local people to do that, so Developments by JEM is one of those beneficiaries, and we also see that there is a minority woman-certified sub-contractor who is working on the compliance contract, and that was a contract valued at three-million dollars," said April Baskin.
The oversight committee meetings are public, but there's no public notice yet on the Bills website for when the next meeting is going to be.