JEA CEO, COO address Jacksonville City Council, vow to ‘be bold’

With the controversial debate about privatizing Jacksonville’s public utility JEA in the rear view mirror for now after Mayor Lenny Curry said he wouldn’t introduce a privatization proposal, the Jacksonville City Council Special Committee on the Future of JEA Thursday had a different feel.

JEA’s interim CEO, Aaron Zahn, addressed the committee for the second straight week.

Zahn took a grilling a week before, but with a skeleton crew committee missing many members, the CEO was able to have a convivial dialogue.

“We need to step up our game … to be bold, to be innovative, to be the utility of the future for Jacksonville,” Zahn said.

The CEO sounded notes of unity, saying “we’re all in this together,” and vowing a refocus “on the core business” withint the context of a “partnership framework.”

Zahn also lauded COO Melissa Dykes again, and their partnership.

“We’re going to be bold. Going to be JEA. Bold ideas. Bold commitment to growth,” Zahn said, vowing economic development, “new jobs,” and a “fiscally-responsible asset.”

Council members, in the context of that clean slate, pushed forth with their concerns, including undergrounding of utilities from Councilman Jim Love and septic tanks from Councilman Bill Gulliford.

Zahn vowed a commitment to septic tank removal, a project that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars if completed.

Councilman Greg Anderson, meanwhile, pressed Dykes (the former CFO) on the matter of bond ratings.

Dykes noted that once the org change gets “settled in,” meetings with the ratings agencies will be necessary to “have some sort of continuity with respect to our credit rating.”

We asked Zahn, in the gaggle after his remarks, if that augured a potential rating decline.

Zahn asserted that he was “not sure if the assumption of decline would be a correct one.”

“I will tell you that we’ve been in touch with them,” Zahn said, as part of the “normal course of business” during a management transition.

“You go through a management transition, you get on the calendar of the rating agency [regarding] how the transition impacts the day to day operations. We are not changing any of the fiscal responsibility initiatives and the efficiency initiatives,” Zahn said, describing the utility as functioning as “business as usual” despite the drama of recent months.