FAO Select Committee - Nov 02, 2026

Okay. Thank you, everyone, for your patience, and thank you, everyone, who showed up for the FAO Select Committee focused on JTA. We'll start out by introductions, with introductions, starting with Mr. Russell, please. Brandon Russell, Council Research. Mary Stepopoulos, Office of General Counsel. Philip Peterson, Council Auditor. Ron Silum, Group 2 at Large. Chris Miller, at Large, Group 5. Joe Carlucci, District 5. Nick Holland, at Large, Group 3. Rory Diamond, District 13. The beach is just visiting. Okay. I wanted to start out in a similar way that we did previously. I wanted to follow up on any outstanding questions we had from last meeting. So if any of the committee members are visiting, and again, I just want to point out, I consider Councilman Rory Diamond as a quasi-committee member, just because he's our liaison to JTA. So certainly welcome his comments as any of our comments here. So we'll first go to Pastor President Salem. You're recognized. Thank you, Chair. Through the chair to Mr. Peterson. I had requested information earlier this year. There were some cost savings initiatives put in place. The two that came to mind was the furloughs of staff, as well as the elimination of the paratransit system. And I wanted to know what those dollars added up to, to see how it compared with the $40 million hole. And was there any comparison to those two? Because obviously somebody recognized things weren't going well. Do you have those figures? Through the chair to Councilman Rory Salem. We do not. We have requested that information of JTA, along with a number of other items. And we are waiting to receive that. Once we do, we'll evaluate it and then report back to this committee. Through the chair, who did you send it to? I don't know specifically. Ms. Schepler and Mr. Barnes have been our main points of contact. Brian Parks is coordinating that within our office. I believe both of them are on that email. I'm just trying to look it up right now just to confirm. Ms. Schepler, can you all address that or when we will have that data for the committee to evaluate? Are you looking to see if you got it? Through the chair to Councilman. Councilmember Salem. I actually do have the information related to the furloughs. I just have not had a chance to send it. And I had a question or two. So I'll give you approximate numbers, but I'll give the actual numbers after this meeting. But there were 88 individuals that took furloughs. The amount saved was $758,000 approximately. And that's from when to when? That was through the end of fiscal year 26. I believe they started sometime in June, the June time frame. We originally planned for four weeks of furloughs, and it's only for a subset of employees that made greater than, I think, I don't want to say the amount. But there was some amount of dollars. Anyone that made over that had to take furloughs. Before, when we ended up making the adjustments that we made, we reduced the requirement for employees to go to take four weeks down to three weeks. So the total amount saved was about $758,000. How about the paratransit? That's something I'm going to have to require more follow-up on. We, it's, it's, you know, historical. There's a calculation we'll have to do. So I'll get back to the committee on that this week. Any approximate number that you can come up with? I cannot. Jeff Smith may be able to address that. $10 million? Yeah. $8 million is the annual, through the chair to Ms. Schepler, is that roughly an annual cost? If someone could come, what I'm trying to do is establish exactly what the savings would have been if we would have taken your recommendation. You, you recommended we end it, as I recall, and, and the council was resistant to that. Yes, through the chair to Councilman Salem. With that recommendation, we would have continued to do some of the work under the connection with USERV. And so the projected for Connection Plus was $8 million. We would be looking to save approximately $5 million if we were able to do that. So if we, if, if the council would have taken your recommendation on that, there would have been a $5 million annual savings. That was, that was the goal. And I will share that the problem we were trying to solve is that you can go to one location and you would have a ready ride vehicle, a Connection vehicle, and two Connection Plus vehicles. Sir, I, I, I don't want to relitigate all that. I'm just trying to get the, the, the dollar amount that would have been saved was $5 million. Yes, sir. So we're under $6 million with a $40 million hole is, is what I'm, I'm trying to get to. Thank you. I appreciate you answering the question. Thank you, chair. Thank you. And this is for, for JTA. Asking for, and hopefully some folks brought some documents today, reference the different oaths or manuals, any type of written documents that spell out fiduciary responsibilities or that executive team members or board members review and acknowledge their fiduciary responsibilities. Any of those documents that exist, I've asked for three times now I'm going on a fourth. So I'm hoping today someone has those documents that I've asked for that, that cover those areas. Just like I referred to, I reviewed all the ones that I was given by JEA, for example, and there are fiduciary responsibilities listed throughout. All their various documents for their leaders, their executive leaders, as well as their board members. I'm looking for those similar documents for JTA. Good afternoon. Jessica Schepler, Senior Vice President of Public Affairs for the Jacksonville Transportation Authority. I believe Mr. Ferguson stated last time that there is not a separate signature type document that the board signs. Other than the four governor appointees that are appointed by the governor have a whole application filled out that they have to fill out and sign with a notary. And that does have the chapter, the Florida State Chapter Code of Conduct that is part of what they have to follow as board members. Yeah, he said he did not know, but he would check and find out. Well, I guess we have a lot of other things to cover with the CFOs, but I'm amazed at that, that there isn't a manual oath, other things that don't exist that spell out specifically executive and board member responsibilities regarding the fiduciary wellness of the organization. That's, I've never not seen that in any organization I've looked into. So, are you, are you sure, Ms. Schepler? There's nothing that exists except something from the state level. That is my understanding. Okay. Thank you. Anything else from anyone else? I know from the two from, yes, Council Member Diamond, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is just as relevant here, obviously, as it is for the Finance Committee, but just FYI, I've been going back and forth with Mr. Ford about his appearance before the Finance Committee and expect that to happen in January. The exact date in January, we're still going back and forth on. Okay. Thank you for that update. Appreciate that. Anything for you, Council President? Okay. I think so. Okay. So, we'll now, I think that was it. I think those are the only things that were still hanging there. I got, I received some other information that was helpful. I just want to say, you see the main item on our agenda today is talking about and talking with the chief financial officers that have been in place at JTA over the last four years. And we've heard a lot from the new, current CFO, and so I thought it was important, and a few of you also reinforced that with your request to have, if possible, have the CFOs here. And I have to say right up front, Mr. Greg Hayes and also Ms. Heather Abora, I want to thank you. Thank you for coming in. Thank you for the discussions you and I had. And thank you for your willingness to be able to have these exchanges. It's going to go a while, I'm sure, but from my perspective, the biggest part in all of this is, as with everything else, let's just understand what happened. And for us to be able to do that, seeing things through your eyes, from your perspective of your time and your positions is crucial for us to be able to do that. Find out the facts, find out what happened, and then find forward, going forward, what our recommendations are, so that these things that have happened financially with this crisis never happen again, hopefully. If we take the right steps, make the right changes to be able to help put JTA on the financial footing they should have stayed on, that they were on at one time. I will say, for the record, I had also reached out to Mr. Srinath, and I apologize if I haven't pronounced his name correctly, Raj Srinath. We had a great conversation, and I really thought he was coming in as well, so that we would have had all three CFOs present today and be able to give their perspective of their time and answer questions on the part of this committee. I thought that was all set for today, and over the weekend had some exchanges with a lawyer who identified himself as representing Mr. Srinath, and I still believed we'd be able to get him here today, but that has not occurred, so he will not be, unless he comes in during this session, I take that that he will not be participating in this committee meeting today, so I just wanted to let everyone know, but I did want to cover some areas for his time period, because during that time period we had some projections on revenue, I believe is the main part, if the auditors will confirm that, that turned out to be grossly over the actuals, and we ended up, at the end of that year, I believe $19 million in the red. So, I would love to hear it from Mr. Srinath, but at least for now, it looks like we're not, but I extend that invitation for him to come at a later date, if he changes his mind on that. So, with that, I'd like to get started. Yes, please. Council Member Diamond, you're recognized. Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Chair. Might I recommend that the Finance Committee take this up on Wednesday, since they're a standing committee, we could simply do a subpoena for Mr. Srinath then, and that, you know, gives you a chance to do some more back and forth, but the Finance Committee has been very helpful in getting these things done for us. Yeah, I'm certainly fine with that. I'd love for him to call me after this and say, hey, no, I'm coming in for your next meeting. Would that be okay? But barring that, I'm certainly fine with that. You know, we owe it to the taxpayers to get to the truth, and we're not, at least I'm not, and I don't think any of us are, out to get anyone. We just want to do what I just described earlier, and so we really owe it to the taxpayers to get to the truth, and it's hard to do that when people who had key positions and made key decisions have decided not to come and be part of this process. So, yeah, I don't know my colleagues here. I just want to make sure, are you two okay with that if I don't hear from them before the finance meeting? I would explore all opportunity for him to come without a subpoena. Well, I would, I'm sorry, go ahead. And it sounds like you're trying to do that. I just want to make sure something didn't happen today where something happened and he couldn't come. I just don't want to, and I think Council Member Diamond would agree with that, that we need to do everything we can to get him here. But short of that, he's a key player in all this. He was a CFO for the longest period of time, and I think we need to get him here. Yes. I agree. Mr. Cardellucci, do you, Council Member Cardellucci, do you have any thoughts on that? All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I mean, as it stands right now, I think it will be very clear that when you have further discussions with him that, you know, look, we've already issued one subpoena. We don't, you know, love issuing those. But by all means, if he doesn't want to come here voluntarily, then we can absolutely opt to have that go through the finance committee. So, you know, we want to extend grace where grace is needed. But at the end of the day, we need answers. And, you know, we don't want people just dragging their feet because we want prompt response. So thank you. Okay. Thank you. Anything from the President? You know, I will say, and I should have said this, you know, I'll just say exactly what happened. Mr. Srinath and I had great conversation for a long period of time, and he agreed to come in. So that was where I left it. And then this weekend, just this weekend, was contacted by his lawyer saying that it did not look like he would be coming in. And I believe there were other exchanges with other members. Don't know the details of those either to that effect. And so I'm pretty sure that was a conscious decision, working with his lawyer, to not come in. Again, unfortunate, but that's where we are. Oh, Mr. President, you recognize. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I agree with Councilman Diamond that we should consider a subpoena option. I agree with Councilman Salem and Carlucci that we should consider all options, and I agree with your assessment that we should try to contact him in the next two days before Finance Committee, and given, you know, the opportunity to voluntarily declare a date that he will stick with, so we shouldn't have to do it. But if we need to do it, we should. Thanks. Thank you. Ms. DeFopolis, you recognize. Thank you to the Chair and through the Chair to the Committee. So I just did a couple of reminders on the process, because you did just go through this. If there is a desire for the Finance Committee to take up the issue of a subpoena, an additional subpoena, you would need to address that with the Chair because it needs to be added to their agenda for Wednesday. It's not going to be on the agenda otherwise. In addition, normally when the standing committee that's being tasked with taking up the issue of a subpoena takes it up, it's to determine whether they want to issue the subpoena. And we usually list the time and date of when that individual who is subject to the subpoena would be required to come in and testify. So that would need to be addressed as well if the intent is for Finance to take up the actual issuance of the subpoena on Wednesday. And finally, just as an additional reminder, as I know you all are aware of this, the subpoena that's issued by the Finance Committee would be for the testimony to occur in front of the Finance Committee. So to the extent that that is a desire, then we would do something similar, either have them testify in coordination with the Chair at the end of a regular committee meeting of the Finance Committee or at a special committee meeting of the Finance Committee. Certainly the FAS Select Committee members could also attend. Okay. Thank you very much. Oh, yes, please. Vice President Carlucci, you recognize. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, you know, I like kind of where we're headed right now. I don't feel rushed on this. It sounds like Mr. Ford is going to be coming in in January. So, you know, I'd love to just kind of dovetail on that and bring the CFO in at the same time or maybe before, maybe after. So, we have time, and I think erring on the side of Grace is good before you, you know, just throw out, you know, send a subpoena. So, obviously, we're coming from a position of we've done it once, we'll do it again. But, you know, we just want to make sure that he can get all his ducks in a row, so to speak. But I like the idea of bringing him in in January along with Mr. Ford. All right. Thank you. Okay, we'll next transition into the main part of our agenda. If Mr. Greg Hayes would please come forward to the podium and introduce yourself, please, sir. Sorry. Good afternoon. My name is Greg Hayes. And your address, please, or say it's on the record. 8605 Dairy Drive, Jacksonville, Florida. Okay. Thank you, sir. I'm going to go for my colleagues and others here. I'm going to go through a series of questions, and feel free to chime in. And, Mr. Hayes, feel free to elaborate where you think is needed. But I want to be able to have some base questions that we make sure we've covered the main areas I think we need to address. So, thank you again for being here today. How would you describe JTA's financial condition during your tenure as CFO? To the chairman, my tenure? And if you would, if you would give us the dates of your tenure for the record, we may know, but others may not. I started as chief financial officer at the Jacksonville Transportation Authority in March of 2017. My tenure ended in September of 2023. During my tenure, we generated seven consecutive years of surpluses, totaling over $135 million. When I left, we had $187 million of cash in the bank. So, we were a very strong, long, strong record of surpluses each year. So, you, and let's just, I heard you just comment about the cash. So, the reserve status when you departed was in what shape? We had $187 million in the bank of that. I've got the numbers here. So, cash on hand, approximately $35 million in our reserves. We had two separate reserve pools. One, we call financial reserves, board-mandated reserves. And we also had what we call the capital projects fund. So, between those two is $115 million. And then, in bond proceeds that were in the bank, about $36 million. Total of $187 million. The most important of those are the financial reserves and the capital projects fund. We had a board policy that established financial reserves as 25% of our transit operations budget each year. So, that was approximately $25 million because the budget was about $100 million at that time. On top of that, we had additional reserves for legal, for right-of-way, for other things. That total was about $12 million. So, between those four categories, it was between $35 million and $40 million during my tenure. And then, on top of that, our capital projects fund, which would really be our unrestricted funds, was at $76 million when I left. Thank you. Oh, on, well, it may be a while, so if we want to, like, hone in on something he's just said, I think let's just go ahead and do that. I don't want you guys to miss your points. So, Council President Howland, you recognize? Okay. Same. Council Member Diamond, you recognize? Thank you, Chair. Just a clarifying question. The $187 million in the bank, approximately September 2023, how much of that was restricted versus unrestricted? Restricted would have been about $90 million. About half of it was restricted. And through the Chair, was that mostly LOGT funds or capital improvement kind of restricted funds or other restrictions? Yes, that would be restricted. Okay. And then, you said you had a board policy of 25% reserves. Where was that policy? Was it unofficial? Was it written down somewhere? No, it was written. Absolutely. Do you remember when that came about? Did it come about when you were CFO? It was before my tenure. We just carried it on through my tenure. Did it ever go away after your tenure or during your tenure? Not during my tenure, no. It was consistent throughout my tenure. Did you report back to the board regularly what that number was at all the board meetings? Every quarter, we would report out cash standing. When you reported it, would you report restricted and unrestricted? Yes. It was detailed. And were they broken up? Yes. When you, the 187, was that the high mark of restricted and unrestricted reserve? No. The year prior, it was over $200 million. Over $200? Okay. And then, and I'm just sticking on this, Mr. Chair, because I do have other questions, but I just want to make sure I got this part down. Um, the written board policy to have 25%, in your opinion, had you been approaching going underneath that, or if you did go underneath that, do you, would you, do you think you had like a responsibility to alert the CEO or the board about it? Or who would have had that responsibility to say, hey, we're, we're going to break through our, our reserve barrier? Yeah. So, as part of the quarterly report out to the board, that certainly would have been covered if we were approaching that limit. When you say covered, though, does that mean you would have apprised the board like verbally? Or do you think the CEO would have apprised them to say, hey, this is, I mean, how would that have actually happened in real life? Like, how would you flag it that we're getting close? And during my time, the process would have been to alert the executive leadership team of which I was a part, and then to alert the board chair, or the finance committee chairman or chairperson on the board. And who, I, I've heard this executive leadership team a bunch. We heard it last week at the board meeting. Who, in your mind, is the executive leadership team at JTA? During most of my tenure, it was the CEO, myself, the CFO, the chief administrative officer, chief transportation officer, the chief human resources officer, and the, the construction, whatever the title was for the chief construction officer. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. And I just want to make sure, because I'm going to ask similar questions to, to Heather as well, to try to keep this on a, on a similar plane as far as our discussion with, with the added input of my colleagues. But at any point, did you have any concerns about JTA's, JTA's financial health or any, any directives associated with that financial health? Concerns about the financial health, that's, that's sort of an ambiguous question. I mean, my, my role as, as the CFO was to ensure that we had the resources to do what we wanted to do. And so there were always conflicting priorities. We did have a substantial amount of cash. The desires and the needs were much higher than that, than the amount of cash we had. So it was all about prioritizing the projects that we wanted to complete. Okay. Um, were there any, under, under your time period, were there any expenditure patterns, um, that were short-term variations or indications of any broader issues? During my tenure, revenues increased substantially pretty much every year. Expenses also increased, but as I said, we, we did generate surpluses with revenues exceeding expenditures each and every year. So on a, uh, an overall trend, expenses were increasing every single year. But as long as we were able to sustain the surpluses and control spending from, from out, out pacing revenue, then there was not a concern. Um, were there any, were there any internal warnings, any, anything? Anything that were brought to your attention from outside of your area, um, observations that, that were brought to your attention or the CEO's attention of things that just weren't in line with generally accepted practices, uh, that needed your, your attention? Not that I can recall during my tenure. Okay. Yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll go to, uh, passphrase in Salem. You recognize. Thank you, Chair. Were there, were there any, this, this, this lead team, what, what's what I would call it, were there any discussions during your tenure about initiating projects that would, there was quite a, maybe some dissension amongst the lead team where you advise the CEO, we might want to not, we might not want to do that because of the cost of it or something like that. Can you describe those situations to me? Well, as you know, the, the, the, I'm, I'm sure the question relates to the autonomous vehicle program. So the universe, uh, U2C, sorry, I had to recall from memory. U2C was a product program that we had discussed from the time I started in 2016, which ATA, and then when I took over as CFO. So we were, uh, developing, designing the program for a number of years before we ever spent any money other than some, uh, some design, uh, funds. The, uh, we brought on a, a head of automation, Bernard Schmidt, and he was the one that really developed the entire program, put that together, and scoped out what the three phases of the U2C would be, which we had the Bay Street Innovation Corridor, we had the, uh, conversion of the Skyway, and then the, uh, expansion of the, the system at some point. So we, this is a little bit of history, but the, the, uh, original part of the program, the Bay Street Innovation Corridor, rolled out just a little while after my tenure. The expansion was always, uh, uh, uh, a little bit speculative in what the cost would be, but there were funds made available under local option gas tax, and so I wouldn't say there was any dissension. There was a lot of discussion and a lot of analysis done to try to determine what the cost of that program would truly be. If we had the funds to be able to complete it and how we were going to do that. So that's where we spent a lot of time and energy and effort to, to, as a team, trying to make sure that program was successful. So it sounds like, and I don't want to put words into your mouth, that the, uh, the CEO obviously was pushing this particular project to his team, and you and others were trying to figure out exactly what it cost and how you would make it work, uh, throughout that time. It was a priority for the organization. Well, that's the CEO, is it not? Absolutely. The CEO is the, the, the ones that set, the one that sets the priorities for the organization. I just want to make sure we're- As a leadership team, we support the leader, the CEO. Okay. So all this was going on during your tender, your tenure up until you left in September of 23. Correct. All the planning for, for UTC and all those types of things. Um, uh, when you say, were there times, would you say that the lead team advised the CEO that maybe we should slow this down or we don't know the cost of this and maybe we should not do this in terms of the UTC? The discussions were mostly, because we only were on phase one when I was there, were really just how to make phase one successful and how to roll that out. Beyond that, it was still, as I said, very speculative in how we're going to get there. And phase one is the Bay Street corridor that we have today? That's right. Okay. Thank you, Chair. And what, speaking of phase one, could you explain a little further financially what finances were expended associated with phase one? Um, initially it was a 40, approximately $40 million program. JTA was going to be in for approximately $8 million, I think is what we had allocated to it. Um, the program grew, the project grew because the, the, uh, operations and maintenance center was added to it, which wasn't in the original scope. And so that added, the project ended up being about $60 million, approximately, my understanding. And, uh, JTA's portion of that grew substantially as well. What was the original projection for that facility? It wasn't in the original scope, in the original design. But then, um, and this may have been after, uh, your time period, but wasn't there a, uh, uh, projected cost for the facility? And then there was a, uh, a pretty large overrun for that facility. That was after my time. Okay, that's what I thought. I just wanted to try to see where we were in that process, uh, during your time. But you said your original projection was for $8 million that JTA would be in for. Who would be providing the, uh, the rest of the funding? There was, uh, a federal grant for a portion of it. The state DOT was in for a part of it. JTA was in. You know, I think there were some, uh, private funds that were supposed to help support the project. And what all went into the decisions and who was involved in going from the $8 million to the, I think you said, $40 million? No, it was, so, oh, the, uh, as far as JTA's contribution? Well, I think the biggest part of that was the, the operations and maintenance building that was added later. Okay, okay, thank you. Um, I'll go to President Howland, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, I, my questions are more along the lines of budgeting and forecasting because that's how a team determines its financial health moving forward. Um, and as I understand it, uh, Mr. Peterson, the JTA provides quarterly reports to the council auditor. Okay. Um, and in the second meeting of the FAO Select Committee, we went through all those quarterly reports. So, actually, some end-of-year forecasts and then quarterly reports in the last two years. Um, so, a question for you, um, sir, Mr. Hayes. The, uh, you, as CFO, are responsible for preparing the quarterly reports that JTA gives to its board and to the council auditor every year, uh, four times a year. Do you also do monthly, um, budget meetings internally in JTA during your tenure? Did you? We had a process that, uh, every month we would run a P&L for all the cost centers, 60 or so cost centers that we had at JTA. And then we would meet with the, the teams, the appropriate teams, each, either administration or HR or finance or operations particular, to share with them the results of, on the expense side in particular, where they stood against budget on a regular basis. And you would prepare both a monthly P&L and a monthly balance sheet, inclusive of cash balances? Well, for, for those meetings, it was really just focused on expenses, because that's all the, the, the extended team is focused on. That's what they own. But for the, uh, the board, what we'd share with them was a full P&L and balance sheet with projections. Okay. And, and you would do that monthly? You'd share that with them? Well, every board meeting. They're not always monthly, but every board meeting. Okay. Um, could you tell me who prepares them? Would it be the CFO and the CFO's team, at least during your tenure? During my time, it was me. It was you preparing them? Yes. Okay. Taking all the inputs from the controller and, and various other folks? Correct. Okay. Uh, who approves that before presentation to the board? That would have been reviewed with the executive leadership team and the CEO. You do that in kind of a combined meeting? In preparation for the, uh, the board meeting, there was always a pre-review. Who has final say on what the final numbers are presenting to the board of directors? As far as the projections? Yeah. The CEO. I mean, I, I would have, I don't recall him ever changing any of my numbers, so. Oh, okay. That's important to know. Was there ever, um, so that was going to be my next question. Was there ever a, you know, Greg, I think we're understating these revenues, or, um, I think we're potentially overstating these expenses, um, you know, increase the revenues back to show we're getting more revenues than we expected, because I think you're too conservative and, um, nothing, anything like that? No, no, definitely not. He, he had confidence in, in me and my, uh, projections, and so he, he didn't make any changes. So he would have been hands-off, a little bit hands-off, just taking what you did, uh, perhaps, and, and saying, all right, well then, that's right. He, he wasn't getting in the nitty-gritty and challenging the CFO's assumptions, at least during your tenure? It was mostly just to understand where we were going and what the board, what we were going to tell the board and the story that we were telling them. Okay. And then on the back end, when you're preparing that P&L and you're looking at expenses, you're going through normal standard CFO protocol, you're analyzing all actuals and projections when you prepare the forecasts and everything like that, leaving no stone unturned and making sure you capture all the expenses then. Correct. All right. Um, and so would you be confident in saying that, uh, for the, anytime you presented a P&L to the board on a monthly basis and a three-month P&L, you know, quarterly report to council or the board on a quarterly basis, would you be comfortable that those were prepared accurately and reflected all the revenues and expenses at, um, with a, in a realistic way? Yes. And would you be comfortable at the time that you thought that the rest of the ELT was, was confident, um, and competent in understanding all those numbers alongside what the CFO presented to the board? Yes. Awesome. Okay. Thank you. I just want to ask one follow-up to that. Were the, was the financial information that you presented to, to both the, to actually the board, the executive leadership team, and the information that our auditors received, were they always the same? Was the information always the same? Yes. Okay. Um, I'm going to go over to Council Member Diamond. You're recognized. Uh, thank you. Through the chair. And I, I didn't do my, um, standard, thank you for being here. Really do appreciate it. I know being down there is not fun. And, um, I really do appreciate, uh, you answering the questions. And doing it on a panel is always even harder. Because we have all the time to think. And you're on the, you're on the spot. So thank you. Uh, through the chair, just a couple of questions. Uh, I'm going to ask about, uh, some of the stuff Council President was asking, and then just go back to Navi real fast. So, um, I, did you watch, by any chance, the, um, any of Mr. Barnes's presentations on how budgets were created at JTA? Have you heard any of that? Okay. One of the things he said to us, and he said at last week's JTA meeting, is that directors were given their budget. And there wasn't an interaction between, like, the CFO and the directors. It was like, here's the cut you have to do. Live with it. What was your sense of that? Was that accurate during your time at, at JTA? No, let me walk you through the process that we used during my tenure. So that, uh, the starting point would always be, what are our projected revenues for the following year? So as, as, you know, part of my role is to research the state tax projections and federal grants, all the grants that we're going to receive, and project what the revenues will be for the coming year. So sales taxes, gas taxes, um, any federal grants that we got on the operating side. Really just focused on the operations at first. And once I was comfortable with what the revenue number would be for the coming year, I'd usually review that with the CEO first. Say, here's where we are. So then we could give guidance to the rest of the organization on what the expense budget should be. And so typically, for most of my time, it was, the original guidance was flat. So you have to keep your budget flat. So every one of the divisions would then create their budgets, roll them up, consolidate them. And inevitably, that number would be much higher than the revenue number. So then it was an iterative process to go back and say, we're over by $10 million. We have to find $10 million of savings in the budget to be able to get under our revenue for the coming year. Normal budget process. So we'd go through that, mostly me with the other executive leadership team, and them working within their divisions to push those numbers down, either reduce head count, reduce project expense, whatever it was. And so once we had finalized that consolidation, we wanted to come in under the revenue number, so we had some contingency left over, had some cushion. And we did that every year as part of the budget process. So once that was done, then it was reviewed internally with the leadership team, then with the board finance committee, and then finally with the full board for approval, and then we'd go through the whole city process with the council auditors and the council. Roger, through the chair, but you heard what Mr. Barnes said, and that's, to me, that sounds like how a budget suit should be done. But Mr. Barnes said that essentially that process, what you just described, didn't happen in his very short kind of review of the last year and a half. So would you say that what you heard from Mr. Barnes was just different than how you did it? It didn't sound right, but I'm sure my, my, Heather may be able to speak to that when she comes up later. Sure. Okay. And then I want to flip to Navi really fast, because you were in the early planning stages looking at phase one. Let me ask you about phase two and the, and the projections on the Skyway. I'm sure you're familiar that there is this idea that we would owe the federal government, you know, $90 million if we didn't do something with the Skyway. You're familiar with that? Yes. Did you all have discussions about asking the federal government just to get off the hook about that? Did you have that discussion? Yes, absolutely. What were those discussions like? Well, it was, I mean, we did a lunch and learn with city council in 2017 that I led that part of the discussion about the federal obligation, why we could not get out of it, why the FTA was not going to allow us to, to be able to, or wouldn't be able to waive that for us. We had ongoing discussions for several years and got a formal letter from them, 2019, maybe 2020 timeframe that said they would not waive that obligation. And so, you know, we did have numerous discussions and tried to get them to allow us not to, to get out of that obligation so that we could have options in how we move forward with the project. But they were not willing. Tracking. And then, so you have a speculative cost for phase two, right? And then for phase three, who knows, right? And then phase one becomes, ultimately is more expensive. Were there any discussions about what if revenues aren't significant enough to cover phase two and phase three? What are we going to do? One of the things that I did was a long-term cash projection and include in there what the projected operating costs would be for the U2C and then how we would offset that with, you know, mitigations. One would be to shut down the Skyway once we started up the U2C program and then found other cost savings as well. So, always we were looking at how will we manage this new program that, that at that time there were no operating expenses for and where would we have the offsets? So, I'm going to ask you a little bit of unfair question then because if, in your mind, you felt like there was never going to be a way to make new program work with the requirements of being JTA, would you have felt comfortable saying we can't do this program? There isn't going to be the funding? I think it would be more likely that we would find cost savings somewhere else. Would that have meant like cutting other programs, like cutting buses and stuff like that when you say that? Like what do you mean? Probably, I mean, buses were the core service but we would have found cost savings somewhere else to, as I said, it's always a trade off in priorities. That was a priority project and so we would have found cost savings somewhere else to offset that. Did you ever feel like the NAVI U2C was being put over the obligations of the people of Jacksonville? Like that focus on that program was more important than doing the job for the people? I can't say that. I would say that we were trying to make sure that we were, I was trying to make sure as the CFO that we were able to fulfill all of our obligations and meet all of our priorities. And then just one other question, I'm sure going through all these budgets, because we talked about this budget process, that you saw things that were just wasteful. Did you see stuff that was like just wasteful that got spent anyways, even if you were flagging it as like kind of not something we ought to do? Well, I can't really speak to specifics. I saw the numbers and the increases in spending and that's really the whole issue here is spending increased very, very rapidly over the past couple of years, it was what led to the deficits. Well, let me ask a more specific question then, who is in charge of really looking at each budget item to say that's a necessary expense and then that's not? Ultimately, during the budget process, that would be me. Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. We'll go next to past President Salem, you recognize. Thank you, Chair. Was the paratransit system in place when you were there? Yes. It was. Was it an increasing expense that you were concerned about? It's, let me just look at the numbers for a second. So during the time that I was there, we went from 14 million annually to 22 million annually, so almost a 50% increase over a seven year period. So yes, it was an expense that was growing pretty rapidly and then has grown quite a bit since then as well. So six, seven percent a year, I mean, that's high, but not double digits or anything like that. But later, after your tenure, it did drastically increase. Correct. And that was always a challenge because the biggest part of paratransit is an unfunded federal mandate that we had to cover through other means. Let me go back to something Council Member Diamond was alluding to when you said we would find savings somewhere in order to make that NAVI system work. I mean, you've got the ferry, you've got your transportation projects that the city gave to you for the extra penny or two, you've got paratransit. I mean, where would you find the savings without cutting some of your core services or core obligations for that matter? It's hard to say, I'd have to go by memory, but the ferry was a profitable service, I believe, so it paid for itself. The projects were all capital projects, so that didn't have anything to do with our operating expenses. So it would be either headcount, some other form of overhead, or perhaps cutting back on Connection Plus or some of these other more expensive services. No discussion about bus routes and cutting those back? No, that would not have been part of the discussion. Okay. One other question that has come up and mind boggles me, you're talking about projections and that you did projections for the board where they could look out three months, six months, nine months, and have a feel for what's happening to their revenue, correct? Correct. And you did that your entire tenure there. Yes. So there were multiple levels of that. One would be in every board meeting in the board package, I would project what the full year financials would be based on wherever we were year to date at that point. Every year in our board retreat, I would do a long-term financial projection and look forward five years on the operating side and on the capital side to provide projections and look at different scenarios. Inflation was really high at certain points. Whatever the economic factors were to put those in there and look at different scenarios and what the outcome would be. And then my final year there at JTA in 23 for the 24 budgets in our 24 budget book, we engaged with Deloitte to do an independent assessment. Five-year financial projection, 10-year capital projection to do an independent assessment of what those numbers looked like. And for the most part, they validated the projections that I had been providing to the board. Well, Mr. Hayes, you must have heard the discussions the last meeting or two where projections basically no longer occurred and the board was not advised of projections and did not see this cliff that occurred. You heard those discussions. I did. Do you know when those projections ended? Did they end with your tenure? I can't answer that. All I know is what happened until I left. Okay. But you recognize that what you were doing changed substantially after you left in terms of the board getting advised of projections, revenue, if it was potentially going to come down. They were not aware of that. What I heard was the projections were not being done. So I can't speculate on that. Okay. And you don't know when they stopped? I only know what happened up until September of 23. I got you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. And this is going to be kind of a follow on to that line of discussion. You've mentioned a couple of things about this, talking about the spending. And I'm not asking you to point fingers in any way, but from a CFO perspective, you obviously have been watching closely what has happened since your time there, since you transitioned. I just wanted to ask you if you would explore this just a little bit further as far as what are those overall, in your professional opinion, what are those overall things that contributed to where JTA is right now? Their financial situation where all the reserves were depleted. They blew through the lines of credit, had to come and get more access to LOGT money to be able to level things out, all the drastic cuts to routes, all these things that you know have occurred. It sounds like you're describing a pretty normal, in my mind, a pretty normal business organization approach to finances, and that I'm not hearing any big red flags on departure for commonly acceptable accounting practices or financial practices. But after you left, again, I'm not asking you to point fingers. I'm just saying from a professional finance officer's perspective, what were those factors that you say beyond just the overall spending had increased beyond what they could finance? What are some of those factors, and what do you think should have been done differently? Well, I didn't really pay any attention until I saw that 25, I believe, the organization lost around $20 million. So that's the first time I really looked at it. And then with everything that's been in the news recently, I did look at the auditor's quarterly financial reports and annual reports just to see what happened. So just by observation, it's very simple. Expenses increased far beyond revenues. Salaries, benefits, and services, particularly connection, the expenses have grown to a level that's obviously not sustainable. Just a very simple observation. Given those overall comments of what happened, what of that was controllable by the executive leadership team and those involved in the executive leadership team with oversight from the board? I can't answer that question. I do know that during my time, if we saw that expenses were going to increase above revenues, then we would have to take action and we'd have to cut expenses. Okay. Yeah, I'm going to just ask one more question, unless my colleagues, oh, I guess, yeah, I wanted to kind of do that. Go ahead. We'll go over to you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple of roundups. So I think I have my head around most of this. Obviously, something went wrong, right, where JTA was doing fine with these reserves and all the rest. And now, you know, 200 people lost their job last month. Systemically, where do you think the break should be? Or where was it when you were there to be like, oh, this is what the projection is? Who was supposed to raise a yellow flag and then a red flag? What systemically should have happened when it was clear that expenditures were going to far outpace revenue? I always saw my role as the person that raises the red flag. Any issues, any warning signs, it was my job to make sure the CEO and leadership team knew what those were and determine what we were going to do about it. During your time, did you ever have to do that? Be like, hey, it looks like things were going pretty well, like great revenue coming in. And I'm sure you had a bunch of COVID money and other things that were helpful. Did you ever have that moment? At the beginning of COVID, absolutely. There were serious worries and concerns and uncertainties. And so as a leadership team, we spent a lot of time going through all the steps that we were going to take to reduce expenses, cutting services, furloughs, all the other things that we had planned. And then the federal government came through with relief funds. And a lot of those, we didn't have to do. Yeah. So basically, you got a cover from the feds with their cash, right? Correct. Is there a written or unwritten policy somewhere that establishes a floor? Of how much money JTA should have available, you know, to be able to weather ups and downs? That's what the financial reserves that I spoke of at the very beginning were. So 25% of the transit ops budget, and then a legal reserve, a right-of-way reserve, and another one. So $12 million plus $25 million. So $37 to $39 million, somewhere in that range. That was the board-mandated financial reserve policy. Roger that. Did you have a chance to watch the JTA meeting last week? I did. Did you see Mr. Ferguson's comments? I did. When he spoke about essentially being forced to do things, and I want to get his language the best I can, but essentially he said that safety was compromised because of financial restrictions, that essentially there was, things were forced on the executive leadership team. What was your response to that? How did you think about that? I was quite surprised. I mean, it's, you know, things were very challenging for the past two years, it seems, but that was not my experience previously. And then just the wrap-up question, and I say, and I ask lots of people this, especially at the end of deposition, so forgive me, and this is not a deposition, but did you ever see anything illegal during your time at JTA? No. Did you see anything unethical, any conflicts of interest, people getting gifts they shouldn't have got, stuff that just was like, meh, that doesn't look right to me? No, I would say we spent an inordinate amount of time with the ethics officer for the city and really talking about that to make sure that we were in compliance and the board was in compliance. Roger that. Thanks. I wanted to follow back up. You know, you said, just so I understand during your time, who you informed, and we talked executive leadership team or ELT a lot, but if you don't mind, I'd like to get a little more specific. When you gave updates or reports, whether they're weekly, monthly, quarterly, when you gave those reports, like, I guess at a basic level, who did you directly work for during your time? What individual? For most of my tenure, I reported directly to the CEO, Nat Ford. For the last year, the executive leadership team was shifted, and I reported directly to Cleveland Ferguson. For the last year? For the last year. Okay. During that time period, both periods, when you gave those updates or when you would say, hey, we've got an issue here, I've got to tell you about this or whatever, who was, were the same people involved and informed each time? Well, it was whoever I was reporting to would be one, but it was, a lot of it was focused on the board and making sure that they were aware of our situation, our status, financial status. But, you know, it was, we had regular executive leadership team meetings, and in those meetings we'd talk about everything, and financials were a part of it. And the whole team was there? Yes. But if you reported something or gave an update to your direct supervisor, which was Nat Ford during the first period you talked about, was it just between the two of you when you gave those updates? Or was there someone else in the room? Was it a close, smaller group for any of those updates for the financials? It varied. I mean, sometimes it was the entire executive leadership team. Sometimes it would just be me and the CEO, because we had a lot of one-on-ones to talk about financials. And then always the board was part of that discussion as well, the board finance committee chair, and then the rest of the board. But did you feel comfortable through the entire time that you were there that all the executive team members, as well as the board members, received all the accurate, current information they needed to make leadership decisions? Were they all getting that information? That was the goal. A lot of times it's hard. A volunteer board, some of them not financially astute, just trying to keep them as engaged and aware of all the numbers as I want them to be. But certainly they received the updates and they asked questions and reported them out. The finance committee chair would always report it out to the full board. Okay. Thank you. And we may have, are you able to stay a little bit longer if we have a follow-up? Sure. Okay. I'm going to close this out unless someone else has another question. But I wanted to ask you, I received an update on all the personnel at JTA. They gave me a listing over the last, I believe it went 10 years, of the people who were in the senior level positions of JTA and just what the reasons were they left and what the time period they served. One of the things listed for you, and I guess that's why I want to ask you, what were the conditions, if you don't mind sharing, for your departure? It didn't seem like a normal transition or retirement listed for the reason for your departure. I think the appropriate euphemism would be involuntary separation. I was told they wanted to go in a different direction. Okay. Okay. And that's what it was. It was listed as involuntary as the reason. So I just wanted to give you an opportunity to explain that, if there's anything more to that. It wasn't a matter of difference in financial approach to the financials or anything else, other than they told you they wanted to go in a different direction. Not to my knowledge. Okay. Thank you. In a different direction. Okay. Thank you very much. Is there anything else you think pertinent to what this group should really understand about either your time or what you've observed since your time that we really need to pay attention to and maybe get more into the details? The only thing I'll say is that I was, and listened to some of the previous meetings, surprised to hear that projections and forecasts weren't being done. And so hopefully that was not correct, but during my tenure, you know, we had a whole range of reporting mechanisms to keep both the board and the leadership team and the entire organization apprised on where we stood financially. A lot of different ways to report those things out. And so, you know, that was a goal of mine to make sure that everyone was aware we stood financially and that no one could say they didn't know where we stood. And just as a, I'll reiterate that we had seven consecutive years of surpluses totaling over $135 million, and we had $187 million in the bank when I left. Okay. Thank you. We have two people in the queue. Past President, excuse me, past President Salem, you're recognized. Thank you, Chair. Your departure bothers me. It sounds like you were doing everything that you could do to keep everybody informed and all the right financial information, projections. I almost get the feeling that you were doing too good of a job and you were putting constraints on people that didn't want to be constrained. Am I wrong? Did you sense that? No, I did not. Okay. There was no other incident or anything. They just walked in your office one day and said that we want to go in a different direction. It was actually an off-site meeting, but yes, that's how it went. Mr. Ferguson, can you come forward and enlighten us on that? I mean, I think this is an important point to understand your departure. And then I'm happy to move on from my standpoint, but I'd like to understand. I don't mean to put you on the spot. Through the chair to Council President Salem. I'm sorry. Past Council President Salem. Call me anything you want. Cleveland Ferguson, JTA. I love Florida. I love the transparency of Florida. I really do. I would say that there are livelihoods and multiple circumstances that occur in the life of employment that, unfortunately, in Florida, you don't have the discretion that you may have in other states. So I would just say that, oh, I'm torn. You were pretty vocal the other day. Yes, yes. But that was for a very, yes, I was. I mean, I'm just trying to understand. I mean, a change of a CFO for an organization is a big deal. It is a huge deal. And you've been through several of them. It is a huge deal, yes. And he reported to you. Yes, in the circumstances of the way that the executive leadership team was reconfigured, it was reconfigured quite often. There were ebbs and flows in terms of what folks could endure and still stay focused on mission. And so I would say that there were circumstances that necessitated the direction that I was given to facilitate the change. You were told by the CEO to terminate him. Yes. And you weren't given the reasons why. I am aware of the reasons. I am absolutely aware of the reasons. But you don't want to state him here. Committee members, I mean, am I, if there's a privacy issue here or something. Absolutely, there are. Yes. You know, HR matters are, you know, by their nature. Okay. Those types of, you know. And so I, all of these CFOs, I, you know, I have had a professional relationship with, and they all had, you know, varying strengths. And so I just don't feel comfortable beyond saying that there are certainly HR-related matters, differences in leadership style, differences in what was required. And so a change was, was made. That's what I really would like to say. Okay. I'll stop there. Yeah, I'd say let's, let's leave that there if that's okay. We're going to go over to, oh, you want to speak? No. Okay. Mary. I was just simply going to jump in and just say before we, we start to task somebody with potentially providing confidential or exempt information, which I think Dr. Salem has, has decided to cease the questioning. That was just my, my concern is that we not put him in that position. Okay. Thank you. I'll go over to Council President Howland. You recognize. Thank you, Mr. Chair. No question. Just a comment. I want to say to Mr. Hayes, thank you so much for coming up and volunteering your testimony. I think what we established here was a baseline of how budgeting and quarterly forecasts are done. I think that's going to be helpful as we progress through this. So just of note, again, looking at the council auditors data that they provided us in the second FAO select committee in Mr. Hayes last forecast, the months ending September 30th, 2023 indicates no budgetary stress for JTA as a whole. The one before that indicated the same, no budgetary stress for JTA as a whole. And the one after that, the year after Mr. Hayes ending September 30th, 2024 indicates no budgetary stress for JTA as a whole. So as we get to start identifying what going on, what's going on, timeline's important. It appears that everything that we're going to start focusing on probably happened in the end of calendar year 2024 through 2025 and through now in 2026. Thank you again, Mr. Hayes. Thank you. We'll next go to Councilmember or Vice President Carlucci. You recognize. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, I just want to echo the sentiments. Thank you, Mr. Hayes, for coming. You conducted yourself very professionally, and I appreciate that. And to be honest, I mean, I think the two people that we need to get the answers from aren't here. So I think that's where we're going to get most of our information from. But I do appreciate kind of establishing a baseline of what, you know, the previous CFO's role has been at JTA. But I'm really looking forward to maybe figuring out more in January when we have the two people here that we're actually serving under that, you know, more questionable period. Thank you. I want to go over to Mr. Peterson. And we can come back, but I just want to ask, from an auditor perspective, were there things during this time period that you can think of that we should bring up or we should ask Mr. Hayes before we move on to Ms. Abora's two periods that she served with JTA? To the chair and the committee, there's nothing that I can think of. I think you all have covered it pretty well. And then as Council President Howland stated, our report that we provided at the second meeting, we didn't see anything in that time period up through September of 23 when Mr. Hayes was there. Thank you very much. And I agree with Council President that we've, I think, established a good baseline of where we were during that period. And that's also why I started with the request to ask Mr. Hayes as the first person to come. And so with that, let's transition. Ms. Abora, if you would be so kind to come up and introduce yourself. And then if you can state your name and then your address for the record. And then tell us a little bit about your time period of service. I know there were multiple periods. So if you could make that clear for the record and for us as we focus. Thank you. Good afternoon, sir, and members of the Council. My name is Heather Abora. My address is 1022 Seahawk Drive, Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, 32082. My tenure in the finance division started upon Mr. Hayes' departure, literally the same day. I was in the role as interim, and I don't even know if it was interim CFO at the time, but I was told to watch over finance for the next two weeks until the new CFO, which is Mr. Srinath, was going to be starting. So that was a very short period of time that I was in that position. So that period, just to clarify, it was only two weeks in the role of CFO the first time? Yes. Okay. So I wouldn't expect we have a lot of questions for a two-week period of time. And then the second period? The second period of time is upon Mr. Srinath's departure. So July 1st, 2025, I was the interim CFO for the months of July and August, and then the full SVP CFO starting in September through my layoff on September 18th, 2026. Well, let's back that up. Through my departure as CFO on June 1st, 2026, and then my layoff as the vice president of procurement and contract administration September 18th, 2026. So would you, if you would mind, CFO, what period's again? From July 1st, 2025 through May 31st, 2026, and then I went back to procurement after that. Okay. So we've got that July 1st, 2025 to May 31st, 2026 as CFO. So, okay. I will start out the same way, and I'm sure we'll have other input from other folks here. But same as I asked, Mr. Hayes, how would you describe JTA's financial condition during your tenure as CFO in that time period we just talked about? So for the first two weeks, you know, again, this was after Greg left. It was plentiful. When I came back into finance as the interim CFO in July 1st, 2025, it was a disaster. And when I mean by a disaster, the reserves had been depleted by over $20 million. France Accounting was not doing any of the billing in a timely basis to the federal or to the state funding agencies. There was a third controller that had just started in June, so he was trying to get his feet wet, and the finances were a mess. I wanted to ask, I mean, what was your role right before you said you were in as interim, right before you were put in as full-time CFO, and for what period was that time? For the two-week interim? No, you said right before July 1st. What position were you in at that time? I was the AVP of procurement. Okay, so it was procurement you were in and then went back to after the time period. Okay, obviously, you know, and you pretty much gave us an overview. So from your perspective, you inherited what you just described. So overall, you know, as I asked Mr. Hayes, overall, what got us to that point of little less than two years? What were the things that you believe contributed most to what you, the condition that you inherited, that financial state? Right, so the financial state was that our revenues were not enough to meet the expenditures that the organization was incurring on a month-to-month basis. We were always in a deficit scenario every month. The revenues weren't coming in at a rate that could sustain the expenditures that were going out. At this point, the NAVI project had already launched. So we were in two operational expenditures now to run that service. There were no other reductions in services. So if under prior CFO administration, the thought was that NAVI would come up and Skyway would discontinue, and those $10 million to $10 million operating costs would basically be to, I'll use a word that Greg had used, to be traded off, because you'll be replacing one operational mode with another. That would have been an even wash. That did not happen. So now you're having to come up with an additional $10 million on an annual basis to run both services. And the revenues just were not there to sustain that. Getting to some specifics, and then I'll go to my colleagues here on the queue, but so you say you started as CFO on July 1st. Yes, sir. If I have this correct, the June 30th, 2025 quarterly summary, so just a day before you started, projected a surplus of $3,941,126. Yet, on September 30th, 2025, the quarterly summary showed an overall deficit of $18,989,371. So just from the end of June to the end of September we had a swing of almost $23 million in three months. Yes, sir. Can you explain what happened there? You know, I can't speak to that quarter report that the previous CFO had done, but in the quarter that I had to report on, which was that last quarter of the fiscal year, expenditures were high on the connection, connection plus paratransit services. They did not put into the 2025 budget the costs to run the O&M for NAVI. So that ended up being... You said they did not put it in the budget? No, it was not budgeted. Okay. So that would have been an additional $3 million, $982,000 a month. That started July 1st, so every month, so it's about $3 million, a little short of $3 million. And then just other professional services, contracts, and things that were already rolling and going, the expenditures were still exceeding revenues. Was the, to your knowledge, was the CEO and the executive leadership team aware of those large swings that were just described in the finances? Were they all aware of that? Was that totally public? I believe everybody was aware of the expenditure. Not public, but internally. Yeah. Contractually, everybody was aware of the expenditures that we were going to expend. How about the board? Were they informed right as that was happening? When I came to the point that Mr. Hayes was making as far as projections, I was not reporting on projections to the board outside of the monthly and the year-to-date actual to budget financials that they would get in their board packet. They did not get cash flows or anything like that, because that wasn't the precedent that was set at that time. And you say precedent, and why would that be? You were aware that it used to be that way, given you were with the organization, and that changed? We continued to do the quarterly investment report, which did show the actual cash balances on hand, the reserve balances, the investment health of the investments that we had for our reserves. They did get that and continue to get that on a quarterly basis. On a monthly basis, they would get the month P&L, basically your revenues and expenses. They would get those reports that showed month-to-date and year-to-date costs and what that activity was. But there was no one document that said, here's what the cash flow looks like, or here's what the projections look like for the rest of the year for the budget. The board did not get that. Okay. So a huge change in what was presented, what was offered over that time period before you came into your position and during your time, was it ever mentioned, wait a minute, we need those projections by the board, by the CEO, others. We need those projections. Did anybody bring up that, wait a minute, Mr. Hayes was doing this, this was working well. It was changed at some point. We don't know when that was. But no one ever brought up, wait a minute, we should be getting projections. I can't make good decisions or provide good oversight without those projections. No, I had mirrored the reporting that was being done with the prior CFO administration under Mr. Sreenath. Okay. And I'm going to get in just a few more specifics, and then I'm going to go over to my colleagues here. More on the quarterly reports. The December 31st, 2025 quarterly summary showed an overall deficit of $8,948,741 for the first quarter. But the projected budgetary variances, but projected no budgetary variances for the year. The March 31st, 2026 quarterly report showed a summary of a deficit of $15,665,299,000 in year-to-date actuals. And a projected $2,251,405 deficit at year-end. And as we know, ultimately, the year ended much worse than that. What made, if you can recall, what made JTA project only an approximate $2.3 million deficit? Right. So if we can go back to that first quarter. In the first quarter of fiscal year 26, I was already seeing that revenues from sales tax and for interest income were way off. They were not anywhere near what the budget had established. When you say way off, like to what magnitude? To the magnitude that it was going to be projected to be $10 million less than what was originally budgeted. It was originally budgeted for, you know, $102,000, and I was projecting maybe $90,000 at best, if we were going to take a look at it. I conferred with Council Auditor's Office and tried to figure out and piece together what happened. And they agreed that the budget was a lot higher than what even their comfort level was at the time. But the budget still went through. Okay. And please go on with what you were going to say. Right. So after the first quarter, when I'm seeing all these things that revenues and expenses aren't tracking to what the budget was, I knew I had to do a budget amendment, which is what happened in February 28th of 2026. So we went forward with the board with a $14.2 million budget amendment that was looking to fix a couple things. One, it was going to fix the over-budgeting of revenues. I did an analysis in January, which the CEO and ELT were all presented with, and it showed that my projection, if things stayed the way that they were, we would have been $45 million upside down by the end of the year. We had over $17 million in revenues that was going to come as a shortfall, and we had $25 million in expenditures that were under-budgeted. So I'm looking at $42 million. The first thing I need to do, though, is fix the revenue side because I don't have that revenue. And then other conversations needed to happen to bridge that gap between if we're going to fix the revenue side, we do have to cut expenditures, and what does that look like? And that was the strategic part of trying to right-set and right-size the fiscal 26 budget. And who were the main individuals involved in those discussions that you said you needed to make aware? Yeah. So the ELT was all involved. So that would have been Mr. Ferguson as EVP of administration, Ms. Scheffler as SVP public affairs, Mr. Smith, SVP of transit operations, the COO, and then Ms. Gillis, who was the SVP of capital projects. So that, at that time, was the ELT and the CEO. And as soon as that was determined, how quickly was the board informed? So in January, when the analysis was presented, we immediately went to go and let the board know that we were going to have this amendment to the fiscal 26 budget so that we can right-set the revenues and the expenditures for that shortfall of revenue that we saw coming in. So the board, on February 26th or 28th of 2026, approved the $14.2 million amendment, which was going to do a couple things. It was going to fix a $6.8 million wages and benefits problem because that was under-budgeted by about $7 million. It was also going to fix, on the expenditure side, professional services to start. It was going to reduce extension of staff contracts, which are independent contractors. It was going to reduce IT contracts for items that we didn't need or we were going to renegotiate. It was going to fix the connection because the COO was taking some of the services from the vendor, and we were going to go ahead and do, like, reservation scheduling and dispatch in-house. So we had a plan moving forward to be able to marry, then, the reduction in cost containment of $14.2 million to offset that lack of revenue that we were going to have. That was the plan going into, at the end of February, that the board approved. Okay. Thank you for that. And I'm going to go over to past President Salem. Thank you, Chair. I'll try to make this brief. Just to clarify, the system that you took over when you became CFO did not include projections. So it was clearly the previous CFO after Mr. Hayes that must have quit projections, and you just assumed that and you continued the system that he had. Is that accurate? Yes, so there were not projections, like, true budget or cash flow projections presented to the board when I was CFO because that's not what the previous CFO had done. Okay. Have you been a CFO for any other organization? I have, sir. I was deputy CFO of the Chicago Public Schools. I spent five years in public accounting, you know, took the CPA exam in the state of California. I also worked in public accounting in Illinois. You've answered my question. Thank you, sir. I've been in, I was in the private sector for a long, long time. If someone offered me what I thought might be a promotion, you know, I would check it out to make sure I was not walking into quicksand. Did you have an opportunity to evaluate the CFO job and you decided to take it? Were you sort of told, hey, I'm moving you into this job? And tell me about that. I declined to be the CFO of the JTA twice. It was not something I felt that I wanted to take on because I already knew it was not going to be good. My biggest concern was the level of effectiveness that I felt that I could bring to the table with the administration, right? Would they listen to me? Would they heed if I'm bringing, you know, paperwork? I'm, as a leader and a prior auditor, I'm all about papering things and giving people spreadsheets and documents to say, hey, this is going on. You know, I will remind everyone that there is a difference between creating a budget plan for the organization for the year and what cash flow allows. The issue that we were having was that cash flow wasn't going to allow a big majority of this plan. No, listen, for the sake of time, so you were told to take the position. So after two months in the interim position, looking at the finance staff, who I've worked with for many years, I felt that what the organization needed was a leader that was going to be able to take this group of finance accounting people and actually teach them how to do their jobs, right? Teach them the roles and the responsibilities and make sure that they are actually operating more from a critical thinking perspective and a skill set perspective than saying, well, the CFO said, or this is how we always used to do that. So for me, when I spent two months with that team of people, they really gravitated toward my leadership style and who I am as a leader. And because of them, I then told the CEO, okay, I will go into this role and give it my all. Okay. Going back to early 2026, when furloughs were put in place and there was a discussion about ending Connection Plus, and I've now learned that that total was around $6 million, I think, was the total of those two. And you're looking at, you thought it was a $14 million deficit and ends up being a $40 million deficit. Did you, what was your thoughts in regard to that? Did you believe that was enough at the time? Did you advise for more aggressive reductions in services and such to right size the organization? What role did you play during that specific period of time? We did the $14 million amendment to try to right set the revenues. It was always known by the CEO and by the ELT that we had to cut more. And that more was kind of bridging that $25 million under budget on the expenditure side. So they still had another $11 million to have to strategically figure out how are we going to bridge that gap. And how are they going to do that? That's when service cuts get taken into place and, you know, other things. What we had already deferred, so understand, we already deferred the capital program, right? The only, under, when I was CFO, the only capital projects that were going to progress was the LOGT projects. Because that was the only money that was readily available to support Anvil's projects. Our grant operation... Let me stop you there. You said capital projects were stopped. Yes. Give me some specifics there. What capital projects are you referring to? These were not the road projects. These were not the LOGT 17 road projects. That's correct. These are the other projects. It's for IT infrastructure, safety and security. There was projects related just to infrastructure and things like that. Internal to JTA. Internal to JTA. Facility upgrades, HVAC, things like that. All those stopped. They all had to stop because we didn't have the cash flow to be able to support paying those vendors the money that they would be incurring to get those projects, right? With our grant management process, it's pay and chase. So we put forth the funding to be able to then go to the funding partner for reimbursement. The problem that we had when I stepped in, the capital projects fund, and Greg, that number was a lot when you were there. The capital projects fund was $11,000 when I walked into the CFO position. Okay. For the sake of time, one other question. The accounts receivable. We've heard stories that the accounts receivable were way out of whack. There was things that hadn't been paid in months, if not a year or so. Did you inherit that when you started? Yes, sir. Accounts payable, which are the outstanding invoices. Right. The accounts payable were already running in a deficit scenario when we were not able to pay our bills that were coming in on a month-by-month-by-month basis. Can you give me some feel for how bad it was when you walked in? On average, the number was somewhere between $12 million and $18 million a month that we had to literally make strategic decisions about how we're going to use the revenues coming in. So there was a prioritization already set where, obviously, debt service has to come off the top because we have to pay debt service for our bonds. We then had to pay our staff. People had to get paid. Once people got paid, lawyers had to get paid for the various work that they were doing to defend whatever we had going on in the organization. And then it went down into professional services. And once we got to professional services, with whatever money was left at that point, based on the revenues that we had coming in for that specific month, we would go and make decisions about make sure everybody got a little of something, right, that their invoices weren't sitting out there too long. Okay. I'm going to stop there to give my colleagues an opportunity. Thank you. We'll go next to Council President Allen. You're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm fascinated by this discussion, and I'm left wondering, what is happening to cash during all this, December, January, February, when you're readjusting the expenses and the revenues and you're reporting a P&L? What's happening to JTA's cash? JTA has been running a deficit in cash every month since I got into the role of CFO. Does JTA run accrual accounting where they do the matching principle? We do. And yet there's no balance sheet or cash reported on a monthly basis to the board? There was not at that time. Because you can fudge P&Ls. You can't fudge how much cash you have in a bank account. So there's actually, let me, if any independent authority board member is listening here, and you're not getting balance sheets on a monthly basis or cash, just the base amount of cash you have on a monthly basis, send your CFO and your CEO back to the drawing board, shut down the meeting, and have them come back. There's actually no excuse to not get balance sheets on a monthly basis, which a balance sheet, simple finance 101 is a snapshot in time, and your cash levels. Gosh. In fact, if you're an independent board authority listening here, have your CFO and your CEO put a little mark there and have them sign the financials they're presenting to you every month. I mean, that's why Sarban's Oshley came around after Enron failed, and all because of exactly this. That is really bothersome to me, because this whole thing could have been averted much earlier, I think, if we had paid attention to dwindling cash. Let me go back to a couple things, if I can, Mr. Chair, here. Some of the same process questions I had for Mr. Hayes. You mentioned in September, actually the chair mentioned it, September 30th, 2025, there was a $2 million shortfall projected deficit reported, and then just three months later, the end of the fiscal year, it was now $18.9, so a $23 million shift. But then when we go to December, the first quarterly report of the new year, there's no budgetary stress. In fact, JTA indicated in that quarterly report that you're going to hit all your numbers, and then it starts getting worse. Can we talk about that? When you were preparing those projections, was it you and your team preparing them? Yes, sir. And then who were you sharing them with, the ELT? The ELT and the CEO. Did the ELT ever say to you, you are understating revenues, pump those back up, or you're overstating expenses, pump those back down? No, I gave both the CEO and the ELT the projection for cash flow, an 18-month projection on cash flow. So it showed month over month how our expenses were always going to be over the revenues that we had projected to come in. At any point, did you think that, for example, your March 31, 2026 quarterly summary just showed a $2.2 million deficit? Your June 30 then showed a $31.8 million deficit, and that was just before you left. What happened there? Why did it go so high between the March 30 and the June 30? So the plan for the amendment was that we were going to achieve the cost containment savings on professional services and HR, right? That was the $14.2 million. When I left the CFO role in May and I had given Mr. Barnes an update as to what that plan was, we were nowhere near achieving the professional services cost containment, and the cost containment on the HR side was pretty close, right? Because it wasn't just the furloughs from a cost perspective. It was also we had done a reduction in force, so there were cost savings for those positions. There was not going to be any performance raises for staff, the administrative staff for the fiscal year. So all of those things combined, we hit closer on the HR side than we did on the professional services side. So that added then, right, because now those savings that were anticipated were not going to come to realization. You're not going to get there. So that had to add back in to the already $11 to $13 million that they already knew, we already knew we had to make up in addition to this, you know, this budget amendment. So when you add all these things together, and, you know, just so everyone knows because I'm the procurement person, the contracts for paratransit and for Connection Plus are $15 million and $10 million respectively. That's $25 million. The budget for those expenditure, for those costs, that mode, was a little under $12 million. So you're $13 million in the hole to start with. Now add on, you didn't budget for NAVI in 25, so where do you think those expenditures hit? $3 million of them hit in 26, yet you still have to cover 26 expenditures for NAVI for the year, right? So between Connection and NAVI and then, again, other decisions that were made along the way, those numbers just keep ticking up. And so my $45 million, you know, if we're at $35 million, we're doing better than the $45 million that I had projected in January. Was the board being kept abreast of all these changes? The board was being kept abreast of the budget amendment. We had individual meetings with them, and I believe we also had meetings with councilmen. When we had a meeting with councilmen, and again, this is not a surprise that this has come up, councilman Lannan had direct asked me what our reserve balances were, because I had indicated to him that we were using reserves not only pay operating, but also to cover any of these grant projects for the pay and chase. And he says, well, your reserve balances must be low. And I says, yes, they're materially low. And then he asked me the question of what are they? And at that time in March, I told him what it was, and he wasn't really happy with that. But, you know, I err on the side of transparency and telling the truth. Okay. So at no point during this whole process were you ever told, brush that under the rug? Yeah, you can't really brush the numbers under the rug. Good. I mean, you can on P&Ls. You can't on cash. Right. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. We'll go next. Council Member Diamond, you recognize? Thank you, Mr. Chair. First again, thanks for being, Ms. Heather. Appreciate you being here. I'm sorry you're going through all this stuff. Being in a layoff is terrible. So I'm sure the last couple of months have been awful. But I appreciate you showing up and all your service to the city. I'm not going to rehash all this stuff that these guys have been asking. Really great questions by my colleagues. Just I'm trying to understand. When you were CFO the first time, you said everything was great. And then there's this gap when you go back down to procurement. And then you come back and you said reserves were depleted. Grants, accounting wasn't being properly done. The third controller was being trained up. Finances were a mess. In between that gap, you know, kind of when your predecessor was there, did you have visibility on what was going on in kind of the CFO's office? I didn't unless the CFO, you know, said something to me in passing. Did you catch anything during that gap that, oh, man, there's a problem? Oh, yeah. He had informed me that we were going to be broke. When did he say that? It was probably his year, too, in his second year. He says, we're losing money and we're going to be broke. Help me out, though. When about when that had been? What year? Probably the beginning of 25. Okay. He left in June of 26. Okay. So beginning of 25, he's like, we're going to be broke. Did he say why? No. Did you know why? I assumed the expenses were overrunning revenues at that point. Gotcha. Did you have a hunch then what was that was driving expenses? You know, contractually, I can tell you that I had provided to him while he was formulating budgets what the, what I call non-negotiable expenditures are for professional services, right? You have contractual obligations. Contractual obligations come first, and then you figure out whether you're going to keep your contractual obligations or whether you're going to do something else. He, they were provided that, him and his team were provided that information so that they could make sound business decisions and not just know, like, hey, we have money that's tied into these contracts. You can't just off with your head. So essentially, kind of restricted funds. Yeah, that's right. Well, I mean, the expenditures were going to be incurred unless you did something contractually, like change the contract. Gotcha. So back in 2025, he says, we're going to be broke. Um, you're, you're, you're, you're telling me that it was, you know, these expenses are growing up specifically besides contractual expenses. What else was driving that in your mind? Um, you know, again, when I had an $11 million, um, or $11,000 capital projects fund, obviously all the capital projects funding had been depleted. So all the years where we were running surpluses, anytime we run a surplus, the surplus funding is to go into the capital projects fund. Obviously, if it's down to $11 million, we, we paid NAVI. NAVI to the point of that project started as a $44 million project, right? $12.5 million coming from the FTA, $13 million coming from the state. The rest was all going to be local operating dollars. I think we got $1,000, a million from, you know, the TPO. So things had happened in that project where there were supposed to be in-kind services that we were going to be exchanging for some of that work, and that just never materialized. So the cost for the JTA was the $44 million less the $25, right? So you're still, you're looking at $18 million now at the 44 level. Well, the project ended up being $67.5 million. Help me understand. How could, how could they get it so wrong? I, again, I can't speak to the people that were putting together that project plan, but I, to Greg's point, the O&M building was definitely a big piece. And I think that that building, I recall just contractually was originally pegged at about $9 million, and it came in a lot higher than that. We're still at the beginning of 2025. CFO is telling you, maybe kind of jokingly, but, you know, a series behind it that we're going to be broke. Who should have known? Like, in your mind, like, who? They all should have known. Everybody should have known. Everybody should have known. CEO, yeah, the board should have known, CEO should have known, the ELT should have known. Now, whether they did or not, they, they would have to answer to that. Roger that. I can't answer whether they did or not. I know that under me, they knew that our revenues were not meeting expenditures because they got the cash flows. Sure, but that's after all the nightmares already happened. Okay. Other than that, in 2025, before you became CFO the second time, did you see any other yellow flags or red flags, anybody else talk about big problems that were coming up? Not that I recall. The big expenses that were below revenues, how much of that would you ascribe to NAVI and the UTC experiment? Well, again, the NAVI went from 44 to 67 and a half, right? And then there was no budget for the 25 operation and maintenance of that facility or that mode of operation. So you're already behind the eight ball going into putting just the project up day one. Gotcha. Former CEO, when he got to Dallas, said the problems with the deficit was it was a collision of multiple storms, both on the revenue side and the expense side for our agency. And then he goes on to say the issue was related to the gas tax and the sales tax falling and more expensive side on human resources. What is your thoughts on that being the explanation? Sales tax, sales tax has been on a steady decline. When we put together the 27 budget, at the time, and he has now left the agency, the treasury manager, you know, I asked for substantiation for every number on that revenue side. The initial first blush going into ELT with that budget, I think my number was $135 million. And I was told, you can't give $135 million. I said, well, I don't care whether you, I mean, at the end of the day, this is what the number is. This is what I can substantiate. I can't substantiate more than $135 million. We had concurred with Council Auditor's Office. We had concurred with the Department of Revenue. We looked to see what gas or sales tax holidays were coming up, you know, what was going to carry over from previous ones. So we did our due diligence on that calculation. My concern on the interest income, I don't know where the $3 million for interest income for $26 came, but again, when reserves are depleted, that money is not invested, which means your interest income is going to go down. Same with LOGT, right? Now, while I realize, and no disrespect to Mr. Barnes, but he says we're going to save the money on the interest on the line of credit, which is true. So, but the converse side of that is, but how much are you going to be losing on taking $30 million out of investments that we would have been earning revenue, investment revenue that would have been going back into the LOGT reserve, right? I agree. You know, it's a balance. I don't think it's a wash. I think you would earn more money on a $30 million investment than you would, you know, on LOC. I don't mean to interrupt your flow. The question was like, Mr. Ford is saying that it was those issues, that's why it happened. Do you agree with that? Yeah, I agree on the revenue side that those were the issues. And the expense side? We have had declining sales tax, and LOGT, you know, was somewhat stable. Interest income was down. And then the non-transportation revenue, I mean, that kind of just depends on what we have out there. On the expense side, do you agree that it was HR? On the expense side, the expenses are tied directly to contracts. So when you add up all the contracts, it's more than what you have money for. And those contracts should have been canceled or renegotiated or re-solicited a long time ago. And specifically the NAVI and UTC ones, or just generally, any contracts? Just generally. I mean, the NAVI contract, even in the budget, was supposed to give us almost $700,000 in savings because we were going to take the subcontractors in-house, right? So it's a little bit of a shift, but you're not paying overhead, you're not paying markup and all of that. So in looking at that, and then the services were going to be reduced, too, because we were going to take on that work internally. That work and those contracts didn't get finalized until July. They were supposed to get done in March. So you just lost four months of savings, right? But that happened with a lot of things, even with the furloughs. The furloughs should have started in March. And instead, we threw them all in the last four months of the year. Why do you think it was delayed? I can't answer the why. Mr. Ferguson may be able to speak to that. But I think that the thought process is people with families and children, kids are off during the summer. Why not have the furloughs happen during the summer months, as opposed to sporadically throughout the year? There were strategies that we could have done that were different, that would have been less financially burdensome to the staff had we started in March, but that didn't come to fruition. Did you ever get the sense that, for public relations reasons, you weren't doing what you needed to save the money right away? Okay. You lost me on the question. It's okay. I'm a public relations person asking a math person a PR question, so forgive me. I'll ask you a better question. Okay. Did you see Mr. Barnes' statements here at all about how budgets were being made before he got there? Yes, I did. What did you think? His statement, directors were forced to do something, whether or not it made sense or not, and that because of that, expenses were actually properly being captured in the budget? Yeah. I mean, I agree that in fiscal 25 and in fiscal 26 budget creation, that that's what happened because the staff told me the same thing when I started in July. And then, did you see Mr. Ferguson's speech last week at the JTA board meeting? I did. Just generally, what was your perception of that? Well, it broke my heart. Yeah, it was tough to be in that room. Trust me. Well, yeah. I mean, I worked with Mr. Ferguson. He was my ELT superior for many years under procurement. So, you heard him say that safety and security, so that other priorities could be pushed forward. Did you hear that? I did. Who? On the safety and security, we spend a lot of money on our safety of platforms and people riding the buses and things like that. I mean, we have JSO that we have a contract with. We have Allied Securities that we have a contract with. Those contracts don't come cheap, right? Because, again, you're purchasing outsourced labor with professionals that do this for a living. So, if those contracts had to be reduced in any shape, way, or form, then he was spot on. Gotcha. Let me ask you some bucket questions, then I'll be done. During your time at JTA, did you ever have anyone ask you to do something that you're like, that's just unethical, I'm not doing it? Well, if they asked me to do that, I would just say no. Did it happen, though? No. Okay. Do you see anything illegal? No. When you said that, we weren't properly reporting on grants and grants accounting. Was it a failure to report or improper reporting? Yeah. Failure to report means you're not doing these things on a timely basis, right? So, every month you should be submitting your reports on a timely basis, both to FDOT and to the FTA. I will tell you that on the procurement side, during the FTA triennial, procurement didn't have any audit findings. So, if you want to attest my leadership, I make sure that we don't have any audit findings. But there's a ton on the grants management side. That has been a weak spot for the finances at the JTA now for the last three years, at least since Greg left. Have you seen any fallout from that? Well, yeah. Staff has, the fallout's going to be that the FDOT and the federal agencies aren't going to give us money. Do you know of any grants that we lost because of that? I do not. Okay. One last question here. You speak very fast. I appreciate it. Oh, sorry. I'm from Chicago. And very efficiently. Yeah, 100%. Overall, if you had been a board member, do you think you were being properly advised or do you think the board was misled in any way? Well, in my professional opinion, the information that was presented to the CEO and to the ELT was as transparent as Saran Wrap, right? They got all the information that they needed to make, they got all the information that they needed to make sound strategic decisions. What gets conveyed then to the board members? I never had one-on-one meetings with the board members. So it's hard to say what that was conveyed, you know, what was conveyed to them. Although information was provided to the CEO on a monthly basis. And I wrote a six-page monthly report to him telling him about every department that was under finance and what was going on, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Okay. And you've seen all the fallout. You're part of the fallout, unfortunately, for all this mess. I was. Is there anything else we need to know? Oh, you know we're trying to get to the bottom of what happened. What do you think? You know, at the end of the day, I think that when you have a lot of money as an organization, it's easy to be successful. When all of a sudden you're challenged with reduced revenues coming in, you have to make sound strategic decisions. And the only way that you can do that is collectively as an ELT to go forward, review your organization, and then have the courage to be able to present to the CEO, like, hey, this is what's going on. And did we? I mean, we tried to do that on occasion, but no, not to the level that it should have been done. Why do you think that didn't work out the way it should have? Again, I think it's leadership styles, tone at the top, all the way down. Tell me more. What do you mean? Like I'm stupid. You know, I mean, again, and Mr. Ford is a very dynamic, innovative leader. He expects a lot from his ELT. He expects the ELT to perform and get it done. Is it a stressful environment? Well, for some, it's stressful. Again, for me as CEO, as CFO, and again, you know, let me just caveat this, is that I asked him to replace me. I requested for him to find another CFO because after 11 months in that role, I was working no less than 14 hours a day and weekends. So just trying to get to the bottom of peeling the onion back, what's going on? And every time I touched something, I was like, why are we doing this? There are systemic financial things that need to be happening at the JTA, including taking a look at the financial system. They have 2,500, you know, line items in their chart of accounts where they shouldn't have more than, you know, for instance, MARTA has 1,400 line items in their financials. How do I, as this agency, have 2,500, right? So I think that, again, and Mr. Barnes and I had very frank conversations when I let go of this position, they have to clean house. I mean, they have to clean it up and get it right, right? And they have to be able to train these people to get that done. I appreciate your candor. Thank you. Thank you. But before I go over to two others in the queue, I just wanted to clarify something. You had mentioned, Mr. Borough, that there wasn't any budgeting for the Navi maintenance facility. Did I hear that correctly? In fiscal 25, that's correct, sir. And then how much was expended on that facility? A little under $3 million, $982,000 a month for the months of July, August, and September. What was the total amount spent on that facility? Spent on the building of the facility? Yes. Well, so let's, there's two different things you're asking me here. Okay. The O&M, the budgeting for the O&M is for now running the operation. Right. Okay. That's what was not budgeted. Okay. What was in the original budget for that building was $9 million, but we'd have to pull the records on procurement to see how much we ended up spending for that building. I heard something like $40 million. Is that correct? Does that sound correct? The building started, the project started at $44 million and ended at $67.5. Okay. Yeah. I don't know why I was, and I don't have anything in front of me to say that, but I thought I remembered the actual building itself was $40 million over what was expected. Okay, that would be good to know, and especially if we're not, the projections aren't including that. The other thing I wanted to ask is, and you may have said this, so I apologize, because I had asked Mr. Hayes as well. During your time as CFO, your full time, who did you work for directly? Who was your direct supervisor? The CEO. Okay. For that whole time period? Yes, sir. Okay, so Mr. Ford was your direct supervisor. Okay. I'm going over to Council Member Carlucci now. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just two brief questions. I think we've gotten a lot discovered here today. I wrote down that one of the things that you said was you showed the ELT that, you know, you were running an 18-month deficit month over month. When did you show them that? They got that every month from me, the cash flow along with the balances of what the cash account said and the reserve balances. Okay. So you showed them that multiple times? Yeah, every month we had a strategic meeting the ELT would meet to strategize. It's called strategic. That's fine. No, no, we're good. We're good. We're good. What did they say when you showed them that? Like, carry on? Yes? Yeah. Got it. Okay. Carry on. And now, you know, I'm going to ask this question just because I feel like I have to ask someone who has worked. So you've worked with Mr. Hayes, you've worked with Mr. Barnes, or were you gone? I transitioned Mr. Barnes. Okay. When I went back to Benjamin. And Mr. Srinath, right? Yes. Okay. Yeah, he was a CFO. Okay. In your opinion, was Raj Srinath a good CFO? Raj Srinath's leadership is a different style than mine. Does he have, has he been in positions as a CFO at other transit agencies? The answer is yes. Does he, on paper, is he qualified to be a CFO? So, yes. Got it. So, on paper, he's qualified. Yes. Interesting answer. Okay. Well, I'll reserve, and partly I would say that's unfair to him, but it's also fair to him because if you ask him that, he's going to say, yeah, he's going to be a great CFO. So, and what I heard from Mr. Hayes here today, he was obviously a great CEO. He was there for, I don't know, 10 years or something, was left with a giant surplus in there. So, the numbers speak for itself. And Mr. Barnes has been praised multiple times in current meetings and has, you know, started to right the ship here. So, and everything I've heard from you has been very impressive and transparent. So, for me, the missing key person here is Mr. Sreenath, and I hope I'm saying his name right, but I'm really eager to get his answers and his testimony because even the joke of, like, oh, well, we're about to be broke. I mean, that's concerning, and, you know, I think at the end of the day, if you ask the question, well, who was supposed to do something about this, it kind of starts with the CFO or financial issues, right, especially if the CEO's leadership style is, hey, I trust my CFO's doing the right job here, doing the right thing. So, for me, that's all I have, Mr. Chair, but this has been a very insightful meeting, and I look forward to the future ones. Thank you. We'll go next to Council President Howland. You're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Couldn't agree more with Councilman Carlucci. I think Raj is the next step. We need information there. But you can tell that I've been focused a lot on budgeting, forecasting, and reporting, and making sure it's done accurately. And, Mr. Borough, you mentioned, I want to say it was March or April, where you identified a potential $42 million shortfall for the year-end forecast. If you look at the March 31st, 2026 projection given to City Council auditors, it was expecting a deficit of $2.2 million. And then they didn't receive the one for September 30th until, I want to say, the one, sorry, for ending June 30th until August 4th. And that's when they became aware of the size of the shortfall, which still wasn't $42 million. But why do you think that Council auditors were not made aware of the breadth of that shortfall until early August? From the perspective of me as CFO working with the CLT, they were putting in things that were going to shore up, right, and reduce those costs. So from the perspective of when I stepped down in the March-April timeframe, I had committed to the CEO that I would get them through the fiscal 27 budget in May through the board, which I did. So between then, I was already on my way out. So just a whole series of objections where here's how bad we think it is, but we're going to fix it, so we're going to make it less bad. And then here's how bad it's going to be, but we're going to put in place fixes, and it will be less bad. But those fixes don't get realized to the extent that they should until Mr. Barnes comes and says in August, all of that was a fairy tale. None of it's getting fixed. Here's the full extent of the $39 million shortfall by the end of the year. Okay. That's understandable to me, but here's a – I mean, and therein lies the rub. It sounds like from your testimony and Greg's and others, people weren't being told to fudge the numbers. The numbers are just sneaking up on them over and over and over again. Do we have any way – I mean, maybe this is a question for Mary or Phillip, but if an independent authority thinks – you know, they only have to report it quarterly. If they think that they're going to be off their previous variants by 10 percent or more, can we put in place a council ordinance that says they've got to report immediately to council auditors? How can something like that be done? Through the chair to council, President Howland, so you're really limited into how you can legislate the independent authorities. By charter. So you could always ask for voluntary compliance with that kind of a request. But ultimately, to obligate them to that, I would propose you'd likely have to do a charter amendment to add that in the charter, that that's an obligation of the authority. Okay, I'm working hard to, as we learn some of these things and what went wrong, to find ways that we can correct them. You know, CFOs having to sign the projections alongside the CEOs. I imagine Mr. Barnes won't let another board meeting go by without providing a balance sheet or a cash flow statement. He probably already has. And some of these things. And this could be another one to more timely report to the council auditors so they can prepare. I mean, literally, if they had known that it was going to be this bad in April or May, we could have had the conversation about opening up LOGT then. So no $25 million line of credit from Fifth Third would have to be taken out, you know, putting JTA and giving them considerable interest expense. Well, Mr. Borat, thank you so much for the testimony. Mr. Hayes, the same. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Back to the chair. Thanks. Thank you. We'll go next to past president Salem. You're recognized. Very quickly, thank you for your testimony and to you, Greg, as well. I heard a comment that we get Rodge in in January. Now, I know we got Mr. Ford coming in January. I think there are reasons for that. But I think if finance is going to execute a subpoena on Wednesday, I think we should get him in as soon as we can. I would hope before Thanksgiving, if we possibly can, because I think it's fresh in our minds and I think we could be much more effective by doing it that way. And I'll leave it up to the finance committee to do that. We have our next meeting scheduled for the 10th. I would sure love to hear him and his lawyer say, hey, we'll be there on the 10th. That would be preferred. However, if we don't have that, we do need to move forward so that he comes in. I'm sorry, you, Councilman Diamond, you're going to speak. Well, I just wanted to kind of like flag this for our council colleagues, right? After hearing the testimony today, you hear the gap. The gap is where all the problems are. The CFO is the most important person for that gap. Like, if we have to enforce a subpoena, this is the one, right? If we have to get someone using all the power of this council, then this is the one. You can't just say no. And I don't know what your conversation is like, I won't ask. But if by Wednesday, when we have finance in the afternoon, that's plenty of time to say, yeah, I'll work with you. I mean, at four, it got back to me. He's starting a brand new job, and he was able to do it that fast. So I don't see why somebody else shouldn't be able to. Yep, certainly agree. Vice President Carlitsch, you recognize? Okay, yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to back up what Councilmember Diamond is saying. I mean, after hearing all that we've heard here today, you know, look, let's work with him and see when he can get in here. But previously, I was like, yeah, yeah, January, I think we need to get him here sooner than that because that's just way too much time. So I'm absolutely supportive of that, however it needs to happen. Thank you. Mr. Popolis, you recognize? Mr. Chair, if the intention is that this select committee would like to request that this be taken up for consideration by the Finance Committee, would you like me to coordinate with the chair to see if you would add the item to the agenda? Yes, please. And is the intention that a subpoena would be issued as, I've heard the next meeting of this committee, but understanding that the subpoena would be issued for testimony in front of the Finance Committee, you just might want to consider what date and time you all would want to address with the Finance Committee for that subpoena to be issued for. Okay, thank you. Yes, I was referencing that meeting, again, in the hope that he and his lawyer will say, we need to get in there and be part of this process. Otherwise, it leaves that gap or it forces them to compel us to come in. And so I was saying, if they were to see this, hear this, my desire would be for them to agree to come in on that 10th of November meeting. But if not, then yes, schedule-wise, on the next finance meeting, we have to look at that next date. In my opinion, it doesn't have to be, you know, in the middle of November, but what is the next finance meeting date? And whatever that is, that's what we ought to target, in my opinion. So, Mr. Chair, so the Finance Committee, the next meeting of the Finance Committee would be November 17th, Tuesday, November 17th. So it sounds like maybe your desire is to continue trying to work with Mr. Srinath and his attorney to see if you can get him here for the 10th, and if not, then the item would be taken up at Finance on the 17th. That would be my preference. Okay. I don't know about others. Okay, as of right now, that would be my preference and my plan going forward, assuming Councilman Lanein agrees with that as the Finance Chair. Well, and I would just offer, to the extent that you can come to an agreement of a different date and time that he could appear in front of the Finance Committee for testimony, if the 10th doesn't work, then we would have a date that could be established by the Finance Committee for him to report on that sabina. Absolutely, absolutely. We want to be as open and flexible and accommodating as we can because he's obviously got a schedule, and if there's a lawyer involved and others, I want to be respectful of that and work with everyone. But if everyone's okay with that, that's what I would like to proceed with on the 17th. So we had one on both the 10th and the 17th. Yes, those are the next two scheduled meetings. So maybe you discussed both of those dates with Mr. Srinath and his attorney to see if either one would work, but then I think you'll know well in advance of the 17th whether you need to ask the Finance Committee to take some sort of an action to issue a subpoena for a different date. No, but I think absent that agreement soon on, so that we can still meet our timeline to be able to, through Finance, affect that subpoena, again, last resort if necessary, but that's what I would like to see happen. Okay? Anybody else? Yes. Vice President Carlucci, you recognize? Thank you, Chair. Through the Chair to Ms. Fabulous, does he have to appear before a standing committee? Through the Chair to Council Vice President Carlucci. So the way it works is that it's the committee that issues the subpoena that they testify in front of, which is why we were handling it as a special meeting of the Finance Committee when initially it was discussed that Mr. Ford would address that committee on that Friday. Nurse, thank you. All right, thank you. Anyone else? Anything else? Because that was our main focus, unless there's something that someone else wants to bring up. Okay. Again, I want to thank Mr. Hayes and Ms. Abora, excuse me, and also the JTA folks who have attended. Thank you very much for your cooperation, for your transparency, your openness, your willingness to go through this process with us. And I will leave this open. Again, the both of you had really, really good exchanges with me, and I appreciate it. I leave that door wide open. If you have anything else, because, again, this is about getting the facts for the taxpayers and getting to a better way forward for JTA, who will hopefully continue to focus on the core functions and not let other things come in that, in my opinion, can take us away from those core functions both in our focus but also in our finances as well, which are taxpayer dollars. So if there's ever anything else you think of, didn't share this, there's something else I need to share, or that they need to explore, because that will help us get to a better place. And I will say also, I just wanted to, one more thing, Mr. Peterson, those reports that you gave me, who was it that prepared those two reports? Through the chair, or to the chair and the committee, I have to completely defer to Mr. Barnes. So the two reports that I received were discussed at the special finance committee meeting we had on that Friday when we were discussing Mr. Ford's subpoena. Council Member Johnson referenced Deloitte reports. We said that we had heard of those and requested them. Mr. Barnes subsequently sent those reports to Mr. Johnson, who then forwarded it on to me, and I provided it to you. I believe those are the Deloitte reports, but Deloitte's name never shows up in the reports. I couldn't see it. It's JTA logo, so I can't substantiate it. Oh, Mr. Barnes, if you would, real quick, and we'll adjourn right after this. I just want to clarify, because I couldn't see it anywhere in the reports. Yeah, to the chair and the committee, those were reports from Deloitte from fiscal year 26. So everything in there, was there any part that was management of JTA input assessments, or was that all Deloitte's verbiage and their assessments? No, that was all created by Deloitte. Okay, because I got to say, the one, if others haven't gone through those reports, this weekend I went through every word of every page. There's some good stuff on the way forward, and I know you know that, but very good, very good assessments, very good way forward in each one of those areas, in my opinion. And so having you in the position you're in, combined with those recommendations, I feel good about the way forward. I really do, and we will have some additional recommendations. However, we still have some work to do to get to what happened and why to get us to where we are. So thank you very much, and with that, we're adjourned.