Minority Contracts and C02 Testing

Kenya Hudson

Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. asked the Jackson City Council to consider a disparity study on minority-business inclusion in city contracts this week.

by Adam Lynch
April 20, 2011

The city should study how well city contracts include minority-owned businesses, Jackson Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. told the City Council Monday. He proposed a May 1 contract with Atlanta public-policy consultants Griffin and Strong.

Johnson made the city's role as a successful equal business-opportunity employer one of his campaign platforms, and has worked to include minority-owned businesses in city work, either as prime contractors or as subcontractors. Jackson's Equal Business Opportunity Certification Program expired in 1999, but Johnson said the city keeps the program running through executive order until it gets a new disparity study.

The city recorded a minority-participation rate of 36 percent on city contracts, but Johnson said he would like the number to be higher.

"That's our performance in 2009, which exceeded our goal considerably. But the disparity study's purpose is to establish new goals based on more recent information," Johnson said. "I don't know what we can achieve. The study really sets the floor, not the ceiling, and the 36 percent was the ceiling."

Johnson also told the council this week that Texas-based Denbury Resources Inc. will conduct tests for carbon dioxide beneath the city within the next few weeks.

Jackson may be sitting upon a large underground reserve of the gas, which the Environmental Protection Agency considers a pollutant due to its climate-changing abilities. The heavy gas is useful as a propellant for depleted oil wells because it can supplant the remaining oil in mature wells and push it within reach of oil recovery pumps.

Johnson said the company will be in and around Jackson conducting vibration tests, which residents might hear. The city does not supply permits for seismic testing, but remains cautious about Denbury's work on city property.

"Like any other property owner, we'll negotiate a cost for them to enter," Johnson said.

If the company locates a sizable amount of C02, Johnson said the company will need up to five acres for a well. Denbury Resources representative Gary Stewart told the Hinds County Board of Supervisors last month that the tests would take about 30 days to complete.

Johnson said he did not expect the seismic taps to be invasive. "No booms or anything like that," Johnson said. "And if there are, I'm sure we'll hear from people."

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