Module · Our own analysis, before award
Five years of awards, rebuilt and then tested twice
This module is work we did before this contract existed, using only documents anyone can download. It runs in three parts: we rebuild the City's award record from adopted Council minutes, then test the firms in it against Maryland's certified directory, then against the federal registry. Each part answers a little and stops at a different edge. Where all three stop is the finding.
The record we rebuilt, and what it structurally cannot answer
We indexed the City's Archive Center, machine-read every Council meeting document since July 2021, and extracted every contract, agreement, purchase order, task order, and amendment the Council approved.
Council-approved awards only, July-to-June fiscal year. FY2027 is partial, through the RFP release date. The FY2023 spike is a single $19.8 million design-build award for the Police Headquarters.
- Named private firms
- 84 · $57.8M
- Government and intergovernmental
- 12 · $2.2M
- Nonprofit grants and sponsorships
- 3 · $117,304
- No firm named in the minutes
- 53 · $32.2M
55 distinct private firms across five years. A third of award value cannot be attributed to any firm without pulling the underlying agenda packets.
The five largest identified firms hold 68.2 percent of named private-firm dollars, and the ten largest hold 78 percent. Every one of the biggest awards is construction or utility work, which is where subcontracting happens and where the public record goes silent.
Four structural reasons this record cannot produce a utilization rate
Two further limits, unattributed awards and unresolved entity names, are ordinary and fixable with records the City already holds. These four are structural, and they define what the study has to build rather than collect.
Ownership, as far as a state certification directory can answer it
Award records carry no ownership demographics, so we did the nearest thing the public record allows and matched all 55 named private firms against the Maryland Department of Social and Economic Mobility's directory, the successor to MDOT's minority business office. Seven matched. This is a proxy for ownership, not a measurement of it.
Denominator is the $57,797,728 that went to named private firms, not all award value. Nearly all matched value is woman-owned. No Asian American or Native American certified firm appears anywhere in the five-year series.
| Firm as awarded | Directory listing | Based in | Status | Certified | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ATC Corp | ATC CORP, DBA American Tennis Courts, Inc. | Baltimore, MD | Female | 1997-06-25 | $1,415,841 |
| DSM Properties, LLC | DSM PROPERTIES, LLC, DBA DSM Contracting | Baltimore, MD | Female | 2018-06-05 | $899,848 |
| A&S Construction | A&S Construction LLC | Frederick, MD | Hispanic American / Female | 2024-03-13 | $598,926 |
| Empire Landscape, LLC | Empire Landscape, LLC | Silver Spring, MD | Female | re-evaluated 2026-08-17 | $494,350 |
| Daft, McCune and Walker, Inc | Daft-McCune-Walker, Inc. | Towson, MD | Female | 2012-06-06 | $270,549 |
| Absolute Service Industries, LLC | ABSOLUTE SERVICE INDUSTRIES, LLC | Baltimore, MD | Hispanic American / Female | 2013-05-02 | $117,744 |
| HWA Corp | HWA Corp. | Frederick, MD | African American | 2025-06-20 | $89,540 |
- State certification is not City certification. The Small Business Reserve is the City's own program with its own criteria; a firm can qualify for one and not the other.
- The directory is a snapshot as of 2026-08-17, not certification status at the time of each award. HWA Corp. is a concrete example: certified fifteen days after the award counted here.
- Firms that are minority- or woman-owned but never sought certification are invisible to this method. It measures certification, not ownership.
- Fifty-two awards worth $32.2 million name no firm at all in the adopted minutes, so the true numerator could be higher. The percentages below are shares of NAMED private-firm value, not of all award value, unless stated.
- Matching is substring search plus manual verification. Two passes produced a false negative that a third pass caught, so further false negatives cannot be ruled out. Every figure here is a floor, not a ceiling.
- The USDOT interim final rule of 2025-10-03 placed all DBE and ACDBE certifications under re-evaluation, so certification status is itself in flux and the directory says these entries may not currently be used to meet contract goals.
Size and federal status, and where all three sources run out
We ran the same 55 firms against the federal registry, where SAM registration carries both business size and self-certified ownership. It answers for barely a quarter of the money, and it disagrees with Maryland on at least one firm. Three public sources, three different blind spots.
| Firm | MD certified | Federal | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Waynesboro Construction Company, Inc | No | No record | $19,816,478 |
| Triangle Contracting LLC | No | small, Frederick | $7,196,019 |
| LB Water Services | No | No record | $7,000,000 |
| Mid-Atlantic Utilities, Inc | No | No record | $3,999,495 |
Three of the four firms holding 41 percent of five years of award value appear in neither registry. The fourth is a Frederick small business, a genuine and welcome finding, and the only thing either source could tell us about this money.
MUSCO Sports Lighting is flagged minority-owned in the federal registry and does not appear in Maryland's certified directory at all. Both statements are accurate. Federal socioeconomic status is self-certified by the registrant; Maryland certification requires documentation and review.
A study that leans on either source alone inherits its error. That is not an argument for distrusting registries, it is the reason the availability survey has to ask firms directly and verify what it is told.
DSM Properties runs the other way and corroborates cleanly: woman-owned in Maryland's directory, woman-owned and WOSB federally. Agreement is possible. It just cannot be assumed.
| Source | What it gives | What it cannot give | Award value it speaks to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adopted Council minutes | Date, amount, instrument, and usually a firm name | Ownership, size, subcontractors, and everything beneath the approval threshold | 63% names a private firm; 35% names no firm at all |
| Maryland certified directory | Documented minority and woman ownership, for firms that certified | Firms that never certified, City SBE status, and status as of the award date | 6.7% of named private-firm value matched |
| Federal registry, via SAM | Business size and self-certified ownership, for federally active firms | Firms with no federal history, and any verification of what was self-certified | 26% of named private-firm value confirmed |
- USASpending covers only firms with federal award history. Absence means no federal footprint, NOT evidence about size or ownership.
- Federal socioeconomic flags are self-certified in SAM and are not verified the way Maryland certification is, which requires documentation.
- Matching is by name plus geography. Ten out-of-region matches were set aside rather than counted, so coverage is deliberately conservative.
- Size status is as currently registered, not as of the award date.
Four matches were rejected outright as different entities: Mead & Hunt, A&S Construction, Gavin Communications LLC, Tan Consulting, LLC. Ten more were set aside as registered outside the market area. Both sets are published in the data file rather than quietly dropped.
The full record
All 152 awards, with the source passage on every row
Sort any column, filter by fiscal year or counterparty type, search the passages, and export what you see. The passage column is the actual sentence from the adopted minutes or voting record that produced the row, so any figure here can be traced back to its source document.
| Approved | FY | Firm or counterparty | Instrument | Amount▼ | Counterparty | Source passage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 2022 | 2023 | Waynesboro Construction Company, Inc | agreement | $19,816,478 | private | agreement with Waynesboro Construction Company, Inc in the amount of $19,816,478 for design-build services for the new Frederick Police Department Headquarters (RFP 22-E / CIP 21009) 8 |
| Nov 2022 | 2023 | not named in the minutes | purchase order | $7,588,350 | unidentified | purchase order in the amount of $7,588,350 3 |
| Nov 2024 | 2025 | Triangle Contracting LLC | contract | $7,196,019 | private | contract with Triangle Contracting LLC for the not-to-exceed amount of $6,541,835 and a purchase order in the amount of $7,196,019 for the construction of Motter Avenue area stormwater improvements |
| Sep 2025 | 2026 | LB Water Services | purchase order | $7,000,000 | private | purchase order in the amount of $7,000,000 to LB Water Services for compatible modern meters |
| Jun 2023 | 2023 | Mid-Atlantic Utilities, Inc | agreement | $3,999,495 | private | agreement with Mid-Atlantic Utilities, Inc in the not- to-exceed amount of $3,797,495 and issuance of a purchase order in the amount of $3,999,495 for Water Loss Reduction (North East Street) (RFP 23-K / CIP 360009) 4 |
| Feb 2022 | 2022 | not named in the minutes | purchase order | $2,200,061 | unidentified | Purchase Order in the amount of $2,200,060.78 2 |
| Sep 2023 | 2024 | not named in the minutes | purchase order | $1,800,000 | unidentified | purchase order in the amount of $1,800,000.00 for the construction of a traffic signal and other improvements at Yellow Springs Road and Tuscanney Drive (IFB 23-7) ALDERMAN MOTION SECOND YES NO ABSTAIN NOT PRESENT NASH X RUSSELL X SHACKELFO |
| Aug 2022 | 2023 | not named in the minutes | purchase order | $1,752,555 | unidentified | Purchase Order in the amount of $1,752,555.20 10 |
| Mar 2025 | 2025 | not named in the minutes | purchase order | $1,668,867 | unidentified | purchase order in the amount of $1,668,867.20 (RFP 25-J / CIP 330008 / F-F-14B) There were no public comments |
| Oct 2022 | 2023 | not named in the minutes | contract | $1,293,661 | unidentified | contract and issuance of a purchase order to HMF Paving Contractors, Inc in the amount of $1,293,661.25 for FY 2023 for miscellaneous concrete repairs (IFB 23-2) 2 |
| Nov 2023 | 2024 | not named in the minutes | purchase order | $1,216,011 | unidentified | purchase order in the not-to-exceed amount of $1,216,011 for fiscal year 2024 (IFB FY24-3) |
| Mar 2025 | 2025 | not named in the minutes | purchase order | $1,087,746 | unidentified | purchase order in the amount of $1,087,745.76 2 |
| Jul 2024 | 2025 | not named in the minutes | agreement | $1,000,000 | unidentified | agreement in the amount of $1,000,000 from the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) Strategic Demolition Fund for site prep at Downtown Hotel and Conference Center (SDF-2024-Frederick-00300) |
| Oct 2022 | 2023 | DSM Properties, LLC | contract | $899,848 | private | contract with DSM Properties, LLC in the amount of $899,848.00 for the Culler Lake Park Improvements Project and issuance of a Purchase Order in the amount of $ 949,848 |
| Jul 2021 | 2022 | not named in the minutes | purchase order | $869,408 | unidentified | purchase order in the amount of $869,408.50 for the construction of a traffic signal and other improvements at the Christopher’s Crossing and Opossumtown Pike Intersection (CIP #320018) 2 |
| Sep 2025 | 2026 | not named in the minutes | purchase order | $867,895 | unidentified | purchase order in the amount of $867,895 for the Trinity School Pump Station Upgrades Design/Build (CIP# 370017) COUNCIL MEMBER MOTION SECOND YES NO ABSTAIN NOT PRESENT NASH X RUSSELL X X SHACKELFORD X KUZEMCHAK X X MACSHANE X COUNCIL MEMBE |
| Aug 2022 | 2023 | AMT Engineering | agreement | $861,887 | private | agreement with AMT Engineering in the amount of $861,887 for the design of the Golden Mile Multimodal Access Plan (RFP 21-N) |
| Oct 2025 | 2026 | Hummer Turfgrass Systems, Inc | purchase order | $858,638 | private | purchase order in the amount of $858,638 to Hummer Turfgrass Systems, Inc for the construction of three athletic fields at Westside Regional Park |
| Oct 2023 | 2024 | not named in the minutes | contract | $855,555 | unidentified | contract with ‘Rummel, Klepper & Kohl, LLP in the not-to- exceed amount of $777,777 and issuance of a purchase order in the amount of $855,555 to provide design and construction administration services for improvements to the Downtown Drain |
| Oct 2023 | 2024 | Rummel, Klepper & Kahl, LLP | contract | $777,777 | private | contract with Rummel, Klepper & Kohl, LLP in the not-to-exceed amount of $777,777 and issuance of a purchase order in the amount of $855,555 to provide design and construction administration services for improvements to the Downtown Drainag |
| Aug 2024 | 2025 | JF Petroleum Group | agreement | $743,643 | private | agreement with JF Petroleum Group in the amount of $743,643.38 for the replacement of underground storage tanks |
| Feb 2026 | 2026 | not named in the minutes | purchase order | $669,235 | unidentified | purchase order in the amount of $669,234.57 (includes contingency) for the design of a traffic circle and of traffic improvements on South Jefferson Street at the intersections of Prospect Boulevard, Pearl Street, Catoctin Avenue, and Bradd |
| Jun 2025 | 2025 | not named in the minutes | purchase order | $643,690 | unidentified | purchase order in the amount of $643,690.28 (RFP 25-L / CIP #480161) 3 |
| Jun 2025 | 2025 | A&S Construction | contract | $598,926 | private | contract with A&S Construction in the amount of $598,925.72 and issuance of a purchase order in the amount of $643,690 |
| Aug 2024 | 2025 | Hasen Global LLC | contract | $593,501 | private | contract with Hasen Global LLC in the amount of $593,501 for professional services associated with design and construction of the 7th Street Fountain Park Revitalization and Renovation, Phase I, Fountain Restoration/Renovation (RFP 25-CC) 2 |
152 of 152 awards in view, $92,288,701 in award value. Click any column header to sort. Exports reflect the current filter and sort order.
- 657 documents indexed across the two public Archive Center series, Council Regular Meeting Minutes and Voting Records; 223 fell inside the window and were machine-read, with 0 read failures.
- 266 raw award passages were extracted. 108 appeared in both series and were merged on date and amount, since the minutes and the voting record cover the same meetings.
- Same-day contract and purchase-order pairs covering one procurement were counted once. The purchase order typically carries contingency the contract does not, so the larger figure is kept and the pair is not double-counted.
- One amount written with a comma where a decimal belongs was corrected. Taken literally it would have inflated the series by 72 percent, which is a fair illustration of why machine extraction needs a human reading the residuals.
- Every vendor name was then hand-curated against its own source passage, which recovered two firms the parser had missed entirely and moved one state agency and three nonprofit grants out of the procurement series.
Source: Award series: City of Frederick Archive Center, Council Regular Meeting Minutes and Voting Records, both public series, indexed and extracted by House Strategies Group on 17 August 2026. Certification: Maryland Department of Social and Economic Mobility Directory of Certified Firms. Federal: USASpending.gov recipient profiles carrying SAM registration business types. Vendor names appear as the adopted minutes spell them and are not resolved to legal entities. These are HSG figures, not City figures, and every one will be rebuilt from City-controlled records under the final study protocol.