About Us
Mission Statement
The Mission of the Office of Small Business Opportunity of Richland County, South Carolina, is to provide a race and gender-neutral tool for the County to use as its efforts to ensure that all segments of its small and local business community have a reasonable and significant opportunity to compete and participate in contracts.
History
In 2012, Richland County voters approved a referendum that identified $1.07B in sales tax revenues that would be used to pay the costs of administrative expenses, continued operation of mass transit services, and improvements to transportation projects, including roadway projects and bike/ pedestrian/greenway projects. One provision of the referendum directed council to set up an office to give small and local businesses the opportunity to compete for road and greenway projects under the Transportation Penny Program. On November 19, 2014, the County fulfilled its commitment to ensure that small and local businesses were given the opportunity to participate in the Transportation Penny Program with the opening of the Office of Small Business Opportunity (OSBO). The OSBO was created to provide small businesses with developmental tools to better prepare for potentially successful awards of County contracts.
Ordinance
It is the Richland County Office of Small Business Opportunity’s responsibility to provide a race- and gender-neutral procurement tool for the County to use as its efforts to ensure that all segments of its local business community have a reasonable and significant opportunity to participate in County contracts for construction, architectural & engineering services, professional services, non-professional services, and commodities. The Small Local Business Enterprise (“SLBE”) Program also furthers the County’s public interest to foster effective broad-based competition from all segments of the vendor community, including, but not limited to, minority business enterprises, small business enterprises, and local business enterprises. This policy is, in part, intended to further the County’s compelling interest in ensuring that it is neither an active nor passive participant in private sector marketplace discrimination, and in promoting equal opportunity for all segments of the contracting community to participate in County contracts. Moreover, the SLBE Program provides additional avenues for the development of new capacity and new sources of competition for County contracts from the growing pool of small and locally based businesses. Click here for Ordinances.
To become a Richland County certified Small Local Business Enterprise (SLBE) email us at osbo@richlandcountysc.gov or click on the “Schedule a Meeting” button just to the right of the screen.