Testifying Sept. 30 before the city council’s Economic Development Committee, chaired by Councilwoman Charlene Drew Jarvis, D-Ward 4, Powell described the bind his business faces.

"We have yet to sell the District of Columbia any of the products we manufacture here in this city," he said. "It should be required by law that manufacturing companies located in the District of Columbia get first preference when the city government needs supplies. We pay taxes to the city while outside vendors take our money outside the city."

Powell and his eight local full-time employees turn out 600 to 800 mops a day, he said, and though he has submitted bids for city contracts, he hasn’t been able to get one. Current procurement regulations require city agencies to contract only through vendors listed by the General Services Administration, Powell said. His business is not on the list. And when it came to getting capital for new equipment, Powell said he had to go all the way to Tahoe, Calif., to find a bank that would approve his loan. He steered eight other small businesses on Minnesota Avenue to the same bank, he said.

Jarvis recently charged that the D.C. procurement office, control board and chief management officer don’t do enough to support the city’s small businesses. In spite of a 1997 law requiring D.C. agencies to spend at least half of their discretionary procurement budgets — totaling about $230 million — on contracts with local businesses, only about half that amount was so spent in the past year, Jarvis said.

A 1996 law allows the District’s procurement office to favor all D.C.-based businesses in awarding contracts, with additional preference to businesses that have fewer than 20 employees. But Jarvis said the law is not enforced.

"The Local Business Opportunity Commission, which administers the law, is not adequately staffed nor funded to ensure overall compliance with the law," she said.

Opponents argue that favoring District businesses for city contracts ends up costing the city more.

Powell, 50, started his light industrial business after losing his job at the U.S. Treasury Department. Although he had no experience in manufacturing, he invested all his retirement savings, about $16,000, and taught himself to sew mop heads. He said his business is the only minority-owned janitorial supply manufacturer in the region. Although Powell’s products currently are sold only at wholesale through contracts, Powell said he hopes his household-size mops soon will be available for retail sale at Giant food stores.

A program between the Greater Washington Board of Trade and the Marshall Heights Community Development Organization pairs small businesses such as Powell’s with larger mentor businesses. Powell has worked for years with Giant Foods, one of his largest contracts.

Three years ago, Powell bought the building that houses his business on 35th Street NE. About two months ago, he purchased his first automated mop-head manufacturing machine, a custom-designed machine from Canada that pulls cotton cord off six giant spools, cuts it to a specified length and sews the binding on a mop head in 13 seconds at the touch of a button.

An automatic bagging ma-chine is next in line.

"We can’t own all the buildings, but we find a way to help maintain them," he said. "We’ve got a product everybody needs."

Copyright 1998, The Common Denominator