Cothran

I want to be fair to Besser. I don't want to think the worst. I don't want to suspect that Daja's part of the parking garage proposal involves primarily window dressing, rather than business opportunities for a minority firm.

Bob Davis, the director of the city Parking Authority, says he isn't sure if Besser has any experience either in providing business management or security to parking garages. "I don't think she does," he says candidly.

But Davis thinks Besser is doing a fine job. And, he says, there is no question in his mind that she is intimately involved in the running of the garages and in providing the security.

"From what I can see she does a good job," he says. "She has become fairly astute at the business. I don't see her as a lame-duck partner. When we have meetings she is good. My guys like her. She seems to be conversant in operation procedures for the garage. I don't think of her as a front."

I wouldn't blame one party in the garage contracting process from thinking the worst about the contracting process for the St. Mary's and 16th and Hoff garages. I wouldn't begrudge the joint venture of Five Star/Universal Parking Inc. -- the firm that was running the garages prior to the election of Willie Brown and that lost the business to Team Besser -- that bitter pleasure at all.

You see, after the Parking Authority narrowed the field of bidders for the garage contracts to four, Five Star/Universal Parking was neck and neck with Parking Concepts/Daja Inc.

Actually, the firms were neck and neck only due to the intervention of the city's Human Rights Commission. Parking Concepts/Daja Inc.'s bid over five years (if two one-year extensions are exercised) was more than a quarter of a million dollars higher than Five Star/Universal Parking's bid. But the HRC adjusted Parking Concepts/Daja Inc.'s bid downward by 7.5 percent because of its minority bid preference. That is, because of Jackie Besser's involvement.

And it would take one more act by the Human Rights Commission to push Team Besser over the top.

Five Star/Universal also asked the Human Rights Commission for a 7.5 percent minority preference. If both companies had received the minority preference, Five Star/Universal's bid would have been lower.

"Would have" being the key phrase here.
A few weeks before the contract was awarded, the Human Rights Commission yanked the certification of Universal Parking Resources Inc. as a locally owned minority business.

The reasons for this decertification are strange, to say the least. In a letter to the Department of Parking and Traffic, the HRC said Universal Parking Resources Inc. was actually a Los Angeles-based company that was merely keeping its local offices at the parking garage it was managing, the St. Mary's Square Garage to be exact. That arrangement violated HRC guidelines. Universal also got dinged for supposedly using equipment owned by the prime contractor, Five-Star Parking Inc., rather than its own equipment.

With that ruling, the Five Star/Universal joint venture no longer had a minority bid preference.

William Walker, the president of Universal Parking Resources Inc., told me that the HRC reasoning didn't square with him. "They knew that was my address when they certified me [in 1996]. They knew all of it. They did their inspections and they certified me," Walker said. "All I can figure is someone wanted me decertified."

Since obtaining the garage contract, Team Besser seems to have been busy. Stephen and Jackie are trying to win the $66 million para-transit brokerage contract under consideration by the Public Transportation Commission. Over at San Francisco International Airport, Team Besser seems to have made more fruitful headway, winning a multimillion-dollar contract to manage the arrival and departure of limos, cabs, and shuttle-vans. They have been selected the lead bidder in the contest and have now entered exclusive negotiations over the terms of the arrangement, airport staff told me.

But the most impressive work either Besser appears to have accomplished involves the city's Health Services Commission.

This month the commission will begin drafting a request seeking proposals from companies for a plan that would provide city employees with long-term health care if they suffer debilitating or catastrophic medical conditions such as stroke, cancer, or AIDS.

Wait, did I say the commission was looking for companies that want to send in proposals?

What I meant to say is that the commission appears to already have a favorite company for the job, and that company, US Care, just so happens to be a client of Stephen Besser.

At least, I got the distinct feeling that taking proposals may be little more than a formality after talking to Commission Vice President Claire Zvanski.