NEW ROCHELLE, NY — The Gathering of Men, a community organization in New Rochelle, NY has worked tirelessly over the past year to open up job opportunities on the Heritage Homes Project construction site, a $100 million project financed, in part, by City funds.
The general contractor, MacQuestern Construction Management (“MacQuestern”), has failed to hire local minority skilled labor. Their record of local minority hiring of skilled labor and subcontracting on the Heritage Homes Project is abysmal.
The Gathering of Men’s standing request — to meet with MacQuestern Construction Management (“MacQuestern”), the general contractor — has been met with indifference and a stonewall.
The Gathering of Men sought to address community concerns in meetings with City officials and Steve Horton, the Executive Director of the New Rochelle Housing Authority. They have not been helpful in advancing our efforts.
These officials have repeatedly asserted to The Gathering of Men that they have no control or leverage with MacQuestern. We now know these claims were untrue.
It is clear that under Resolution 205, the City of New Rochelle indeed has, and had all along, a legal role to play in the Heritage Homes Project through enforcement of the City’s own Non-Discrimination and Employment Policy, commonly referred to as Resolution 205. This policy was adopted by the City of New Rochelle to ensure local minority participation in City-supported development projects,
We were surprised to learn from recent news accounts, that the CIty of New Rochelle now states that Resolution 205 applies to the Heritage Homes Project and that they have been applying Resolution 205 all along.
In a persistent environment of denial and abdication of local authority, The Gathering of Men firmly rejects this claim by the City of New Rochelle.
The Heritage Homes are being built in the center of District 3, a New Rochelle election district of special significance for New Rochelle’s minority community.
We find it particularly disturbing that the City of New Rochelle would fail to apply Resolution 205 to a project within the center of a district created by a Federal judge in response to a successful discrimination lawsuit.
Motivated by the desire to see the local community benefit from the tremendous investment taking place in New Rochelle with the Heritage Homes Project, The Gathering of Men request that the City of New Rochelle meet with us, and in a good faith manner, work with us to ensure that the letter and spirit of Resolution 205 is properly applied, not only to The Heritage Homes Project, but to all other future developments in New Rochelle.
This is funny
Just exactly what are these “gathering of men” qualified to do? 95% of them can’t even hold the flag to stop traffic in a construction zone. Hardly any of them are educated to the point where even labor intensive ditch digging is sustainable. Sorry, but construction has costs and expensive unskilled labor is not going to be an accepted resume stamp. It seems Noam is in a pickle as Jared Rice flies above the carcass.