A.G. Gancarski
Jacksonville’s Special Committee on the JEA Agreement doesn’t exactly grab the headlines. However, to those living in Jacksonville and subject to mandatory sewage, water, and power service from the public utility, the relationship between Jacksonville and the Jacksonville Electric Authority bears watching, as Florida Politics did during their Tuesday afternoon meeting.
The meeting agenda identified 11 pieces of “old business” to be addressed. After a 75-minute meeting, three of them had been hashed out, which indicates the road to consensus won’t be an expressway.
Throughout the meeting, City Council members on the committee kept making the case, as Councilman Bill Gulliford did, that “we as the owner of JEA have the right to expect a return on our investment.”
Issues such as the need to expand infrastructure, as Councilwoman Lori Boyer pointed out, to ensure universal water and sewer access were also at the forefront of the discussion.
The most fireworks came during the agenda’s final discussion point: JEA’s exclusive control over utilities in Jacksonville, which was described at least once as a point of “frustration.”
Councilman Matt Schellenberg, who after the meeting confirmed reports that he will vie for the Council vice presidency next year, observed that electricity delivery is “evolving.”
In response to that, JEA CEO Paul McElroy said that there is continually lower demand, sales, and revenue, factors that put pressure on the public utility.
From there, the discussion moved to septic tanks.
Gulliford said “we continue to proliferate” them, even as older, obsolete models are replaced.
Boyer, meanwhile, noted that federal grants for small startup utilities, that could benefit the city as a whole, were precluded by the JEA exclusivity agreement.
With parts of the city “underserved” and “severely challenged” by the utility, there is a connection between subpar utility service and the blight and decay the city struggles with, she said.
McElroy, on behalf of JEA, countered that “JEA does not have the capital to expand infrastructure” and, furthermore, that the utility “does not have a mechanism” to “extract revenue” from infrastructural improvements.
Capital costs, maintenance costs, and repair costs are “spread across the system,” observed the CEO, who got an almost $45,000 bonus last year, according to The Florida Times-Union.
“Cost recovery is an issue,” continued the CEO of a company that gave almost every employee a performance bonus at the end of last year, total sum of about $2.2 million.
A big part of the problem for JEA: older septic tanks, sometimes up to half a century old. Schellenberg observed that in cases where the burdens of maintenance and rebuilding them are shifted to the public, liens could be placed on the property, providing for a recovery of money when it’s sold.
Jacksonville’s Chief Administrative Officer, Sam Mousa, concurred that the “process should consider the city as a whole.” While there “are a lot of good reasons” for an exclusive deal, it “should result on something for the other side of the table.”
Councilman Reggie Brown, meanwhile, observed that for areas in his district, including Edgewood Avenue, Moncrief, and the Trout River area, there is little recourse in terms of infrastructural improvements.
Brown told Florida Politics after Tuesday evening’s meeting of the entire City Council that stormwater fees should go to infrastructural renewal, and he made a similar point in the JEA meeting earlier Tuesday.
“No developers are coming to the U.S. 1 [area] if they have to put down sewage and water … if they have to assume costs for infrastructure,” the northwest Jacksonville councilman observed.
However, those fees have “all been allocated” to debt service.
Expect more action from Councilman Brown on that front as the Council becomes acclimated this summer and fall.
At one point during the meeting, Gulliford used the phrase “cross purposes and cross goals” to describe the relationship between the utility and the city. Whether that’s true or not is a matter of perspective. What’s clear, however, is that JEA considers its own business case first and foremost, and that the COJ is cognizant of that organization’s commitment to self-interest.
The next meeting of this group is on Aug. 11. It promises to be lively.
