A.G. Gancarski
For most of the last year, the JEA — Jacksonville’s municipal utility — had benefited from positive news cycles.
In the fall of 2015, Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry requested the resignation of JEA board members.
The source of Curry’s ire were scripted comments in a board meeting related to a pay hike and contract extension for CEO Paul McElroy. This collusion incensed Curry and his chief lieutenants, who felt the board had become “puppets” of the chief executive.
Curry reshaped the board according to his own vision, and the move paid off.
The JEA Agreement was struck between the utility and the city, good through 2021.
The utility’s bond rating was hiked to AAA, after a successful trip to New York for Curry and JEA higher-ups.
Through Oct. 7, things were rosy for JEA and the board.
Then Hurricane Matthew happened. The utility made the fateful unilateral decision to promise all power restoration issues would be resolved by Monday at 11:59 p.m.
As of 4 p.m. Friday, less than 1,000 people were still without power and the extended restoration process elicited pique.
Customers, who have no alternative to the local municipal monopoly, vented about the impacts of having no power and about JEA and out-of-town reinforcements saving small jobs on back streets for last.
On Tuesday night, council members pilloried McElroy for making promises he couldn’t fulfill.
And then, late this week, it was reported McElroy left Jacksonville last Thursday, while some tracks had a Category 4 hurricane’s eye wall poised to steamroll to city.
McElroy returned to town Sunday — two days into a massive power outage, which left tens of thousands of people in the dark for days, and caused 8.5 million gallons of sewage to escape the system, sometimes into streets and local waterways, as backup generators failed the overwhelmed sewage system.
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The drama will simmer over the weekend, but by Tuesday the heat could be brought to a harder boil at the JEA’s noon board meeting.
Though the agenda doesn’t include any direct discussion of the storm, it almost seems inevitable the post-Matthew JEA will be discussed.
And Mayor Lenny Curry will be attending that meeting on the 19th floor of the JEA Building.
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The agenda offers topics that seem much more urgent than they might have a couple of weeks ago.
The “monthly JEA financial review and statements” and the “monthly operations report” might be lively enough to remove from the “consent agenda.”
Topics like “five-year financial assumptions and projections” and FY 2017 “budgetary transfers” will be imbued with more salience to the general public than might have been the case prior to Hurricane Matthew … especially given that McElroy claims at least $30 million in damage was suffered by the city’s above-ground electrical system.
Meanwhile, the managing director/CEO’s report will be one to watch.
Curry’s got his team on the board. But the board is vastly different than the one that re-upped McElroy’s deal last year.
And with that in mind, Tuesday at high noon offers high drama, 19 floors above the Jacksonville pavement.
