Special Investigatory Committee on JEA - Apr 13, 2026

good afternoon let me call to order the special investigative committee on jea let me begin by introductions and i'll make some opening comments and then we'll get started let me start from my far left colleen hamsey council research barry stephopoulos office of general council brian parks council auditor's office kim taylor council auditor jason teal council secretary good afternoon rory diamond district 13 the beach ron salem group two at large jacoby pitman district 10. kevin carrico district 4. michael boylan district 6. i'm just visiting i've got a two o'clock psg meeting so i'm going to hang her in for as long as i can thank you matt carlucci at large group 4. thank you everyone mr president you have any opening comments or anything okay what i what i'd like to do today is keep the uh the dialogue between the committee council member diamond myself and miss pitman at the end if we have some time at the end we will lots some time to any non-members to ask questions or make any comments they would like to make so i think that's the best way to do this let me go through some issues before we get to testimony first let me go to the council auditors for an update on the capacity fee issue miss taylor yes sir through the chair to the committee um just to let you know that we have had multiple meetings um my staff mr parks and another employee within our office with jea personnel probably upwards of over 10 meetings to get an understanding of the process treating it like an audit but just for our purposes and being able to talk to the committee review but process-wise trying to do our normal get the understanding of everything that's going on over there process-wise so we can understand what initial fees because keep in mind if somebody in order to determine those initial and the charge of the committee the additional charges we've got to get an understanding from very old records of what initial capacity charges were paid because they may have paid into development so to speak at the start so trying to do all that we've met with the office of general counsel mr fackler and mr reingold two times to have meeting get an understanding of some of the legal questions that we have um so we are continuing that process and we'll continue working through um to try to get an understanding of everything that we can related to this in order to complete the charge hopefully that's our goal depending on some of the records that that we can get that are quite old um we'll discuss that as we start getting through that but that that's a brief update for you miss taylor you're still going through mr fackler to get to regina ross is that correct yes sir that's correct let me just mention there is a committee meeting tomorrow that i've asked mr teal to attend where the issue of her privilege is going to be discussed by the board of jea and i thought it would be helpful if we had some representation there i'm hopeful that we can get some limited privileged testimony from her particularly on the capacity fees and in some sense the culture issues without revealing any um secret information of jea but that will be up to the board to to decide and we'll see where that goes okay update on request for information from jea human resources um council member pitman i spoke to diane moser she received our request she was very uh appreciative that we gave her 30 days to complete it um i i don't see any issue that we won't have that information inside of 30 days so i will keep you posted as soon as i receive something okay um anything else that we have council member diamond uh thank you mr chair so just uh i think everybody saw in the uh the news this morning that there's a state attorney from uh state attorney melissa nelson subpoena out to jea and so i the issue is mr chair um back when we did the first jea sick the federal prosecutor tyson duva called me as the chair and said hey don't talk about this don't ask about this leave those for us and i said absolutely okay so i i you know i need to ask you have we we have guidance on this point uh from the from the state attorney in fact i called the state attorney this morning um they have indicated they want to open dialogue between the sick and their office but they put absolutely no restrictions on us continuing our process so we will continue as we are today yeah okay and just for anybody listening at home there's like many levels of investigations that can happen and so on the state level uh councilman salem is talking about the state attorney i've also had conversations with the statewide prosecutor's office who also said they're looking in at jea and said that uh again same thing no restrictions just do whatever you need to do um and so that's out there the other interesting thing about the state attorney uh subpoena that i read this morning is that it asks for text messages and all sorts of stuff from jea going back to last summer um however and i promise i'm not picking choosing between uh news agencies but if you watch some of the action news stuff they were talking about texts that go to january 2025 related to the ballard contract and potential you know um influence in the ballard contract in 2025 so for the state attorney if she's listening uh your subpoena seems to be a few months short you need to go all the way back to january 2025 if you're going to capture what was covered by that agency okay mr de salvo would you like to come up here um let me swear you in sir do you solemnly swear or affirm to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth under the penalties of perjury thank you sir okay mr uh de salvo has asked for 12 minutes might go over a minute or so so we would set the clock for that and uh for his opening statement please go ahead sir okay chairman can you all hear me yes we can great chairman salem and members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today based on our recent news reports in this committee's charge i am here today to share with you four aspects of jea's culture and process that demonstrates jea's commitment to its core mission to provide safe reliable and affordable utility services to our community first aspect working for our community every day jea is a complex operation executive level decisions involve millions or tens of millions of dollars and consequences for our customers our work environment can be intense but it's professional and driven jea's leaders seek excellence in themselves and in the jea team that is the jea work environment second aspect the appropriate process capacity fees beyond the initial capacity charges that any large customers pay is both an individual contract issue between jea and its affected customers and a policy decision for jea jea addresses these matters in an appropriate way weighing both the history and future ramifications for customers and jea there are no rush decisions but a diligent effort to achieve the best result for all involved that is the process that jea is engaged in now on the capacity fee matter third aspect clear decision making in any meet in any matter where legal counsel is sought discussions with attorneys involve a critical analysis of what has been done and sometimes difficult decisions on what needs to be done in the future these discussions often revolve around uncertain outcomes where the risk and benefit of each decision is weighed to achieve the best overall result to support jea the mission these discussions with legal counsel are subjected to attorney-client privilege so both jea and its lawyers can speak freely and engage in appropriate discussion aimed at allowing jea to make the mess the best ultimate decision understanding all facts risks and potential outcomes waiving attorney-client privilege and exposing these discussions without context can do inevitable harm to jea and its decision-making process it can develop excuse me it can devolve decision making into a word parsing and political gamesmanship instead any decision on waiving attorney-client privilege will be handled in a thoughtful and deliberate way by the jea board the jea board is to hear a recommendation on this at its april 14th workshop based on that the je board will make a reason and well-considered decision and then fourth aspect cooperation and pursuit for the best path forward i'm here today as a member of the jea board the board will cooperate with the city council in its pursuit of finding the best path forward for jea on these and all issues where that pursuit is grounded in facts thoughtful analysis and decision making that is focused on meeting jea's mission doing what is right for jea customers this community and jea's employees is a commitment that i personally know each member of the jea board shares on that basis i pledge my cooperation with city council and having jea meet its mission of approving the lives and building community through its safe reliable and affordable provision of utility services on allegations regarding work environment the unsupported and wrongful characterization of jea's workplace in some areas as toxic is not consistent with the operational realities and the data jea employs approximately 2 200 individuals this committee has indicated that 12 employees have come forward with concerns that represents roughly one in every 184 employees hardly indicative of a systemic condition or organizational culture that is problematic jea safety record is unmatched by any other public utility currently we're on a streak of 2 million hours without a safety incident that is a reflection of attention to detail outstanding supervision not low morale jea employee average retention rate over the past years is above 98 percent jea received the building strong communities award from the florida municipal electric association for making valuable investment that enhanced the quality of life for the jacksonville community for three consecutive years jea's fleet services named one of the 100 best fleets in the americas by the national association of fleet administrators jea's managing director and ceo vicky cavey was recognized among florida's trends top 500 highlighting the most influential executives in diff in different economic sector sectors across florida the fulton cut project is evidence that constructive collaboration between independent authorities in this case jack sport and jea city council and the mayor's administration can work together to execute a project that will significantly positively impact our city's economy this is the relationship our community expects these achievements are hallmarks of a team hitting the mark not what has been described in unsupported accusations this committee has appeared to rely on outreach to former employees while former employees perspectives can be informative they must be evaluated carefully by definition such a pool can disproportionately include individuals who departed under adverse circumstances selectively amplifying these voices without context risk creating a skewed and unreliable narrative assertions that employees are scared to death are serious but they must be supported by credible representative evidence to date that standard has not been met but jea has processes and procedures in place to address such concerns disagreement scrutiny and professional attention particularly around legal financial and operational decisions are indicators of an engaged organization working through complex issues on two occasions a member of the board of the jea board has recently recommended a more appropriate path forward allowing jea's established internal governance compliance and human resource processes to evaluate these claims jea's governance structure is specifically designed to investigate address and remediate such concerns in a fair structured and legally sound manner on the additional capacity fees it is critical to clarify the facts regarding additional capacity fees all jea commercial customers pay for monthly service and system capacity their service utilizes through the monthly and other jea fees and charges for service the issue under jea review relates only to an additional capacity charge associated with increased usage over time not baseline service or initial connection fees the situation involving the mayo clinic referenced in some news accounts highlights the complexity of legacy accounts male service relationship predates jea's assumption of the system in 1997 and involves historical agreements and infrastructure established decades earlier in 2022 jea appropriately identified that increased usage at the mayo campus could warrant additional capacity charges mayo disputed that obligation based on its interpretation of a 1986 agreement this misalignment led to ongoing discussion and different legal analysis precisely a type of issue that requires careful deliberate resolution not rush judgment and policy considerations for other customers in similar situations and the cost burden on all commercial customers needs to be carefully considered rather than selectively enforcing charges or taking inconsistent action jea appropriately paused resolution with any single customer in order to develop a fair uniform and legally sound program applicable to all similar situated customers that is responsible governance that is leadership focus on jea's mission to building community through its utility services the jea board will participate in a deep dive session as part of our rates hearing workshop tomorrow and again it's a public session third on the proposed waiver of attorney-client privilege potentially undermining this prudent responsible governess at jea is a political push for the jea board to waive attorney-client privilege in order to further work in order to further the work of this committee of the city council attorney-client privilege is not a procedural technicality it is a foundational legal protection that ensures public entities can obtain candid legal advice fully assess risk and comply with their obligations under the law the committee has sought waiver out of an abundance of caution to access legal guidance and internal deliberations however compelling or pressuring such a waiver sets a dangerous precedent it risks politicizing legal advice and impairing the ability of counsel to provide independent and unfiltered guidance the jea board will participate in a deep dive session on this topic as part of a rates hearing tomorrow again that's a public session fourth on jea's independent structure it's also important to emphasize that jea is by design an independent entity within the consolidated government of the city of jacksonville its governance framework was intentionally structured to allow for operational independence professional management and decision making insulated from shifting political pressures jea's operations are a significant multi-billion dollar business and it's consoled and the consolidated city's forefathers saw the need to run it like a business and limit the influence of politics that independence is not incidental it is foundational to jea's ability to reliably deliver essential utility services to the community uphold fiduciary responsibilities and comply with legal and financial obligations including bond covenants efforts that undermine or circumvent this governance structure risk eroding the very framework that has enabled jea to function effectively respecting that independence includes allowing allowing jea's established processes to operate as intended particularly in the areas involving personnel matters legal review and internal compliance in conclusion the record of supported facts and achievements show utility confronting a complicated decade-spanning issue with diligence and care not avoidance it shows professionals engaging in decision making that is sometimes difficult and always focused on achieving the mission of jea it also shows that jea has internal structures expertise and governance mechanisms necessary to evaluate and address employee concerns responsibly consistent with its role as an independent entity designed to operate with professional autonomy at the same time this special investigation process raises serious questions about neutrality methodology and purpose please continue sir thank you sir jea's responsibility is to operate lawfully fairly and in the best interest of its customers not to respond to narrators that are unsupported by data or shaped by external considerations thank you i'm prepared to answer your questions thank you i've just got a couple things i want to address i'm going to let councilman diamond begin with questions first of all uh uh uh mr so who is chairing that meeting tomorrow that'll be uh mg orander the current mg orander okay we'll have to follow up with mg on an issue uh number two uh mr teal will you update us on the survey i meant to do that prior to uh mr de salvo's comments and let me begin by saying uh mr teal has worked uh tirelessly with me last week uh on getting this survey set up so mr teal thank you for that here's the chair uh through the chair to the committee uh and so what we did is uh we reached out to the respondents uh when the city put out a solicitation for peggy sidman's survey uh and it resulted in three companies that uh that replied uh and so in reviewing uh the responses uh and discussions with those three companies we've selected and you'll see actually for introduction tomorrow night some legislation to authorize the council president to execute a contract with a company called uh secure link and or selection link sorry um and that company has got a lot of government experience they've actually dealt with the uh surveys employee satisfaction surveys with orange county school district in florida so they've actually got some some direct florida experience uh but they've agreed uh to and the price that they quoted us is uh nine thousand two hundred and fifty dollars to do the full survey and what that does is it authorizes a complete survey of the selection of individuals that uh the jea has given us along with some additional names uh of folks that um that have been brought to our attention uh and uh just a little bit about selection link they uh are an offshoot of gallup polling and so they've got a long history of being uh involved in these types of uh endeavors uh but selection link is uh is their employee satisfaction survey group uh but they will start with the template of questions uh that they've uh that they've used in these types of situations they'll allow us to fully tailor those questions for um uh dealing with the specific issues uh they will both uh consist of uh ratings type of questions like how would you rate it on a scale of one to five uh for example but they'll also have um open-ended questions so that people can feel free to add whatever comments that they want uh they'll the survey will stay open approximately two to three weeks they'll send out reminder emails to those employees who haven't yet responded uh so that there will be follow-up um in terms of the anonymity component of it uh they will send each employee an individualized link and that employee can send it from their jea email to their phone or send it to their personal email and they can access it that way if uh if they have some concerns about about how they want to do that and so um they uh have indicated that they uh they have no problem at all uh being able to meet the committee's deadline uh to be able to have the survey results back to the committee in plenty of time to meet your uh your june 30th deadline to report in on this topic uh they will collect some demographic data in terms of you know how long have you worked at jea what are your types of duties you know those kinds of things to be able to uh sort if you will are you a current employee or your former employee you know for example uh and so they'll be able to uh to include that information uh and uh it will uh include their this price includes a uh presentation and so they will uh have their analytics person they've got uh phds and you know all of that stuff to be able to um evaluate the data uh and they'll have their uh their their their that person will be able to make a presentation to the sick committee in terms of the results uh they do offer i don't know if this new committee is interested in but they do offer the ability to provide suggestions uh depending on the uh the results of this uh that gets into the issue of what this commit kitty committee can do in terms of jea managing its uh its ceo um or anybody else on their uh on their um management staff so uh that um mr chair is my presentation unless anybody has any questions i think that should cover it let me make just a few comments um i asked jody brooks for the managers and above that work in the jea headquarters building that's around 140 people that will receive the survey those people that have contacted me or others that are no longer working at jea that want to participate in the survey will be handled separately we will get those results separately from the active employees at jea and we're gonna uh attempt as a we will as a part of the survey get some indication of the amount of interaction the employee has with miss cavey as a part of their results so we we get a feel for that as well um mr teal does that that cover pretty much everything okay um as i said i'm not we're not going to recognize any non-committee members until the end um number two i have invited uh miss cavey to be our to come to our next meeting for testimony i asked her to respond by one o'clock today mr teal did you get a response no mr chairman i didn't get a response okay mr diamond uh this is just my view of things um i might suggest that uh we you know we talked to like jody brooks and a few of these diane moser and a few of these other folks first um because if the at some point the ceo will have to come here she's required by statute so there's no question eventually miss cavey is going to be here i personally i'd rather have a few more folks like tell us what's going on i'd like to get some uh reports back on the things miss uh jacoby is worried about before she's here i mean it seems like we i don't have to call her again okay mr teal would you would you extend an invitation to both uh i i think miss brooks miss moser are two good people to bring in see who's available for uh our next meeting and i would schedule the other one for the meeting after that yes sir and uh let's move forward that way mr chairman do you have a preference for which one comes in first i know that we're waiting on ms moser to give information and response i would i would hold on miss moser until miss pitman's information is available to us so i'd probably bring in miss brooks first yes sir okay miss pitman you're in the queue first of all to the chair i want to thank you mr gesalvo for um making your presentation um today um i guess what my concerns are that you represent the board and not the entire staff right and i know you mentioned about previous um surveys i know your role is to have oversight um to the governance and and the policy um directions and not the day-to-day um concerns of management and employees so i know you can you know you can speak to the actions and the decisions and organizational um roles and i guess you know my concern is and which i've said you know my space here is to be a voice for the employees and my conversations that i've had with past um employees so to me to be able to have the the jea um executive leadership or someone from the union or employees themselves once they feel comfortable and coming forward um i i would feel a lot more comfortable um you know what's what's important to me is that i want to make sure there's a an assurance that you could give me and or the leadership team that today that the voices are heard from the employees and you know and it's and it's meaningful and it's visible and something could be done about it um that's my space um on this committee and to be able to talk to people who have left um jea in a management position to just hear some of the things that they are saying is pretty much in line with what the existing employees are saying and so i don't want you to think it's just 12 people there's just other people that are afraid to say anything and and i will say some of them are colleagues of mine or people that i've done work with or projects with so as i want you to know it's just not the 12 people um you know they have to have some type of protection right now there's a there's a lot of moving parts to what you reported today and what we discussed and and so i just want to be open because you know i'm an employee and i know if something was going down with the city i want to be able to um share what's really going on and so you know from a high level you are high level but we have to make sure that we talk to the people on the front line um to hear what they got to say because i think that's important and ja has done a great job in this community i've been involved in projects with them over the years um but from what i'm hearing it's always been an issue but no one has ever vocalized it because they didn't want any repercussions so all i'm saying for you as the chair is to make sure that you talk to your leadership team and the leadership team as it trickles down to the employees to make sure that they're just not a number um to make sure what they say matter and it's just this became an opportunity for more people to say and to share so i just want you to know my position that i stand on this committee is that i'm i'm i care about the people so thank you and i you know you can comment on that as well because i know that you're not deep in the weeds that your your position is more um capacity building with other board members into making sure that the work and and the budget and the direction that jea is going would you like to comment on that sure would and i appreciate your genuine concern council member pittman on the uh the employees the je employees and and i share your same passion too down to the men and women out on the streets daily 24 7 doing the electric the water and wastewater without a doubt and i'll just say sure whenever there's issues that surface um they should uh be uh be looked into and uh i'm just saying i'm very confident in the processes jea has in place to look into those and to make sure those voices are heard and i'm i'm very confident that they can do that for the benefit of those folks but i i share your passion and thank you for that thank you i'm now going to ask council member diamond to start the questioning i may ask him to jump in at some point but anything he doesn't ask it'll come to me that i have and then we'll go to miss pitman council member diamond uh thank you mr chair um i'm just going to say this the first time through the chair to general de salvo can we assume the rest of the way is through the chair that's fine all right first of all sir thank you for being here you're retired geo you've got better things to do than be here on a monday afternoon i'm sure you'd rather be fishing or making lots of money with a defense contractor or something but you're here you've served for years honorably on this board and for free it's not like we're paying you so thank you i remember when you got appointed we uh we were just going through the nightmare of the last jay scandal and the entire board got wiped out and we populated with new people and we were very careful i think the mayor was uh and the council and getting a good board and i really felt like we were doing really well for a while and then last like three months i feel we hit some rocks and i think the purpose of this committee is to kind of figure out what's going on just like time out what's happening over at jay one of the worst things that i have to do in this job is i have to ask questions with all these reporters with all these people with i guarantee you hundreds of jay employees watching right now where i would much rather ask you questions in person and just sit down and say can you help me understand this can you help me understand that that's my preference we don't get that option sunshine requires us to do it like this and so a couple of these are awkward and there's a couple of questions i have that i honestly don't want to ask and uh but there's people who keep asking me about stuff and i'd rather just let's just ask the question and get it off the table like we did in the last committee sometimes just get some sunshine on it then we move on fair enough all right i also know your reputation is important to you um and you swore an oath uh and so i'm going to be super careful with my questions if i ask a bad question or you don't understand what i'm saying please let me know because the last thing i want is to have since all this is recorded and there's a record that that you don't feel like you have um what you meant to say on the record uh and then two um if uh if we go down a road and there's something you want to fix or you want to add context to something i'm fine with that like this is not antagonistic i think people need to understand especially our folks at jay and people watching at home we're not in a fight here this is not it's not a game we're all on the same team we all want jay to have low rates happy customers happy employees we're all on the same page i think we're trying to get jay through this drama so we can get to the other end of this so we can all feel comfortable fair enough okay all right so let me let me get rolling here first of all thank you for the opening statement um i assume people helped you with that not because you're not intelligent but it was just very lawyerly in there did you write it all by yourself or did somebody help you no i did it with myself and some other people yeah who else helped you other people can you tell me who they are no you're not going to tell me who they are did biggie cavey help you nope you're literally not going to tell me who helped you with your opening statement i don't understand why you need it you read my comments you read or you heard my statement excuse me so what's it matter it's a product of me with some help and i'll leave it at that okay um we'll just pause here for a minute um do you recognize that we have an oversight function over jea at all sure okay and we're elected um to represent the people you recognize the people of jacksonville own jea yes how else are the people of jacksonville supposed to know what's going on with that board if their elected representatives don't ask these types of questions i'm not sure that's why i'm here to answer your questions okay well let me ask you this uh are you gonna answer every question i have about jea or do you have a filter in your mind of what you think is fair or not fair to ask i'll please ask away and if there's something i feel that's not right i'll be sure to let you know but i'm here to answer your questions so right out the box you won't tell me who helped you draft your opening statement i'm not sure what what relevance is it i'm taking accountability for that statement i think that's enough sure i think it would be interesting if vicki have you helped you she did not okay i think it would be helpful to know whether or not um general counsel helped you write it no they did not all right i'll move on uh you've been on the board for how long sir um six years and you were chair for how long two years and you're no longer chair correct yeah that is and if i could make a just for uh councilwoman uh pitman i mean yeah so i am not chair right now that is mg orner just so everybody understands that okay as board chair or as a board member you were getting briefings regularly is that fair to say sure how often were you getting briefings so with committee work uh we usually had one type of committee once a month and then ja board meetings once a month so probably two times a month twice a month yeah and then um you live in jacksonville is that right i sure do um one of the questions i didn't want to ask but people bug me about this so many times that i'm going to ask it anyways uh do you have a job outside of the state of florida last year or a gig of some sort yeah i have a uh i work with the university of maine how many days approximately were you not in the state of florida last year um four months it was the let's see here now the spring semester i'm sorry the fall semester from august to december okay so kind of january i'm sorry okay um in the end of august quite frankly okay so kind of august through december you were in maine generally yeah and i would come back here for meetings gotcha you flew back for the board meetings did you zoom the other ones and the briefings um i did the preparatory uh sessions via zoom okay it was physically present for the board meetings tracking to answer your questions did you pay for your own transportation or did jea pay for that no no that was on me for the between maine and back oh yeah yeah no that was all on my own thank you sure um i you you mentioned it in your opening statement there's no mystery as to kind of like what's triggered all this but i'm going to ask each bucket just so i understand when you first aware that there was like allegations i'm not saying they're true just like when did you first hear there was allegations about toxic leadership at jea yeah first heard at the i'm looking right now 11 march when the the special investigatory committee had their uh press conference announcing the formation of this committee and the reasons why okay that was the first time and then after you heard that did you do any independent investigation into just the toxic leadership part of that that's when it are and i'm looking at my notes here oh yeah that's when we i'm sorry let me back up i first became aware of the allegations of the toxicity and racism i believe it was the 20th of february or shortly after the 17 february when the city council president's text came out in the press and then shortly afterward a response on the allegations of toxicity toxicity so i say that because then that issue was then discussed at the 24 february board meeting roger okay so just uh i had this right uh did you become aware of the allegations about toxic work environment and racism at the same time or did you learn about them differently at different times um at the same time okay and um you talk about this in your opening statement too you're talking about capacity fees when did you first hear that there was like an issue with mayo or anybody else about capacity fees yeah if i recall it was um january so when i first heard about it i believe this year yes gotcha and then um there's been a lot of talk about this ballard contract i'm sure you've heard about that you know i've heard a lot from what i read but quite honestly i i know like less than .001 percent of what it's about no no fair enough uh when did you when did you first hear about it though that there was an issue uh it was mid january when and actually i read about it in the press was the first time i got any uh indication of it okay and then um the combined cycle plant has been kind of a rumbling issue for a long time have you been taking briefings on like the combined cycle plan for like a long time yes that started when we did our irp like three years ago so it's been an issue front and center for a long time probably since you've been on the board right um well not the first year like i said the first two years not really but then three on yes got it okay and then just going back to toxic leadership when you when you hear about councilman carrico council president carrico's tweet and it gets in the press did you do any independent like research did you go and ask people hey is there any truth to this absolutely and by yeah now i'm not going to say it was all encompassing but and i've said this before i think folks have heard it i live right in jacksonville springfield district so i see a lot of the folks out a lot of the jea employees out there day in and day out and even before this this recent um issue of toxicity and racism i always ask them how are things going and you know the deal when you ask somebody on the ground you know doing the the grunt work essentially they'll give it to you unfiltered and of course i'm always going to hear about well i i dispatched my vehicle and the guy before me used it didn't top it off or whatever you're always going to hear that stuff i said no but how's morale and all that kind of stuff and not one time had the issue popped up of any toxicity or racism or anything you'll have general complaints again about not being topped off but generally i saw the morale great yeah i'm tracking okay um so but other than like talking to some folks like who did you talk to about toxic leadership after you heard about this who did you check in with well of course i asked vicky cavey and then i asked the senior leadership that became a point of discussion uh kurt wilson and i had a discussion on the 18th of february and he he told you about that at the last meeting um and then on that session i just listened to him i didn't hardly said anything and i simply asked him okay why am i now just hearing about this now and quite frankly i really didn't get a an answer the other thing too is when you know there's serious allegations when you start getting the anonymous emails or letters to the board members and i've seen those in the past um i did not see any at all over the past year anything having to do with toxicity or racism and normally you're going to see something like that in an anonymous you know nature for letters to the board i don't recall any okay and then uh with regard to like the racism allegations um did you do were you doing at the same time when you were asking folks about toxicity kind of asking is there any truth to this or did you do that differently than the toxic work environment no i i i said toxicity excuse me toxicity and discrimination racism i'm tracking okay so in your opening statement you said three times that the allegations were quote unsupported unquote what would what would what would cross that line when do you think an allegation is sufficient enough to warrant a board investigation okay i would say once the processes are in place to see if there's any validity and so that said that's what jea is in the process of doing so before we jump to conclusions let's see if anything's out there if it's valid and we'll find out what the processes that we're using within jea and by processes do you mean hr hr we're also like um doing a uh in fact we already had a survey in the works before any of this stuff started before the sick was born that's our employee engagement survey which i believe goes out next week i think um and bottom line the purpose of that survey is to find out what's good what's bad what needs fixed what what's what do you need to sustain what do you need to improve on so we'll see what that says and then in addition as part of our internal investigation based on the accusations we're also engaging a um a standing um law firm jas use jackson lewis and they in turn have contracted a ms sherry silberman who's an independent reviewer who will work who will do an analysis and look into the allegations gotcha and i'll ask about jackson lewis yeah tracking i'll ask about jackson lewis in a minute um you also said in your opening statement that there's only 12 complaints from the 2000 plus employees at jea that's based on comments made on your first sick meeting and also at the uh at the press conference okay i mean do you have like in your mind a magic number of the number of complaints is enough to like get rolling um well i mean um you know i would say okay one is serious enough and i don't if somebody thinks they have a legitimate thing right you're always going to have isolated incidences which need to be looked into and if there's something to that you need to take action but if it's one that certainly doesn't imply it's endemic of the whole institution sure but and let me let me just understand this uh the the 12 allegations out there uh would you recognize that if there are 12 legitimate like complaints out there not saying that they're validated just 12 complaints out there they probably aren't the only complaints that there's probably other people who are afraid to come forward you're always going to have a small percentage like that i'm sure if my problem is i guess the question i might excuse me but okay so what is the number that then says are you going to chase down every rat hole for a complaint and that's something you got to balance uh if my problem is with hr if i feel like i'm being discriminated against from hr because the color of my skin where am i supposed to go if that's the case then within i'm no expert on hr but in that case we have the anonymous hotline ethics hotline which you can call to if you're a jea employee okay um there's a couple of surveys going out right now um we're doing one you're doing one if the results come back that there's a systemic problem of racism at jea with regards to promotion in particular with black employees and black managers what is the threshold for you to say we've got a leadership problem at jea that allowed this to happen well that if if if the analysis the survey whatever shows that it is a valid um a valid complaint about racism then that is an issue reflected on the leadership that we got to change things and and again just jumping into a sensitive question here if someone in leadership used the n-word to an employee would that be enough to totally unacceptable yes totally unacceptable the stuff on toxic work environment i think we can all agree it's kind of hard to nail down everybody complains about their boss because their boss has to tell them what to do for you what is the what is the threshold is screaming in the office enough to say that's unacceptable like what is the what kind of facts do you think would be like all right this leader shouldn't be in that position yeah toxic leadership to me is demeaning somebody personally it's not toxic leadership is not demanding high standards and if you can't meet the standards then appropriate action has to take place but it's treating people with dignity and respect gotcha you mentioned that you sat down with kurt wilson on february 18th he asked for that meeting right that is correct he asked for it i'm told on the 18th i think he testified to that or he asked for the day before and then you met on the 18th is that right correct okay how long was it it was an hour it was at five o'clock at five o'clock to around six o'clock at night did you tell vicky gave you before the meeting you were meeting with kurt wilson um yes what did you tell her i told her on the um 17th because there was a conflict and i can't remember what it was some some i was supposed to be at a meeting for something and then kurt and i had to change the time it was a conflict for some pre-brief as i recall let me try to get right to the heart of this did kurt wilson testified here that he told you that if vicky knew that you guys were meeting that he'd get fired okay and this is where i i can answer your question but i want to you you have to really check with hr to make sure i know what i'm talking about at that meeting with kurt and i he told me he had already resigned okay as i recall and i think according to hr he had already submitted his resignation so and i got it the next day as mr wilson said the next day they did away with the position making it sound like he was fired the next day that's not the case they did away with the position that was already unoccupied because he had resigned but i'd ask you to check with hr that's the impression i'm under if he had had the position while he met with you and then was fired the next day because of that meeting do you think that would be a violation of the whistleblower policy at jea um yeah but it's not like yeah but if we're speaking hypothetically there's no way in heck regardless of how contentious the meaning and it wasn't contentious by the way he's just it was a one-way conversation him telling me what his observations were that said i would never then run to the ceo and say fire this guy that's not my remit as a board member tracking uh uh did you work with kurt wilson before that meeting regularly yeah i mean and quite honestly i i was very super curt for the jeez i think he was at ja as long as i've been and was uh was excellent was very good in fact ironically the um characterizing saying before he went rogue is a bad way of saying it but i'm not sure what happened but as recently as the 12th of february when we were at the ricky erickson's uh discharge from the um rehab center our director of electricity got seriously injured anyway kurt and i are walking back from that ceremony and he's telling me yeah i'm working with city council on your nomination okay i didn't sense any any disillusionment with kurt at all and prior he had been fantastic for some reason and i don't know what it is that's between uh him and and the and i guess uh the ceo however the relations soured it took me by surprise um and then just some stuff he started saying took me by surprise i never would have expected that to hear that from kurt he said that um there's a toxic work environment at jea he said that there's issues with general counsel advice he's he testified here i'm sure you've heard about it if you didn't watch it oh you were here that's right sure do you think he was telling the truth or do you think he's fabricating no i'm not uh i'm not here to impugn his honor he has his own way of seeing things which may have been um and i'll just um i'll say this he was he was straight forward when he said he saw no discrimination or racial issues on it and and i agree with that as far as his other stuff it may be his perspective i don't agree with his perspective but if you're saying i'm calling him you know a question is integrity no i'm not doing that i'm sure he'd appreciate that too uh like i said this is this is not antagonistic we're just trying to trying to get all this out because people have these questions all right i'm gonna i'm gonna fast forward to february 20th there is this uh press conference here at city hall um uh who invited you to the press conference i'm not sure i honestly don't remember um you sat next to vicky cavey uh during the press conference or half of it yeah yeah okay so here's a flag question i don't really want to ask but people keep showing me this photo of you guys sitting next to each other it looks like you're holding hands that's not right is it no that's absolutely okay yeah okay yeah it's out no we can move on um at the press conference the mayor said that there is a conspiracy to take over jea from former uh mayor of jacksonville and his former staff do you think that's true i'm not going to comment on that i the reason why i'm not going to it could be it couldn't be but this is just playing into some drama um drama that i'm not going to be part of i keep things black and white okay have you heard of jea public power partners before no i haven't you don't know that they offered eight billion dollars for a 50-year concession at jea no did you know that jody brooks worked for them during that no did you know mike weinstein worked for them during that no um you were at that comp that press conference were essentially let me ask you this did you go to the press conference with the intent of supporting vicky cavey absolutely and also the intent of putting down what what i still say is a is a uh drama not created by jea which some members here have said before at the last sick meeting we didn't create this drama this drama started within city council on that press conference uh announcing the need for this sick that's where the drama started so you went to the press conference to support vicky cavey right you'd already been told that there was allegations of racism allegations of toxic workplace allegations of issues with capacity fees allegations regarding a ballard contract you knew all those things before the press conference no that's not correct and just so the only on racism and uh and toxic leadership the only prior knowledge period on that okay was from the press conference and then with the meeting with kurt and that was it capacity fees is never part of the the um part of this sure okay okay but just all right so but you you're aware that there's these allegations whether it's from the council president or anybody else on racism and toxic workplace environment we'll just stick with those two yeah and you stood behind the ceo at a press conference anyway without having done an investigation yet what if they're true we'll find out and then then if if it's true at the appropriate processes indicate so then i'll take accountability for that um moving on to capacity fees at the mayo clinic um i assume you were briefed on this you told me like you you got up to speed in january yeah no so i got up to speed actually last week but but i will say and for if you go you'll see the results of the meeting tomorrow this is very very complicated um it's not straightforward but i will say some of the narrators where uh mayo and other entities are getting off the hook of having to pay for their services is completely false they haven't been given a reprieve or overlooked any of their services a capacity fee i can give you a two minute thing if you want or i'll just it's how much depth do you want me to go into this i mean i'm really just trying to i like timelines so i just was trying to figure out when you got up to speed on the issue with capacity fees that was okay so i'm 25 smart now then tomorrow after our uh in-depth deep dive then i'll be feel very confident in knowing the major you know muscle movements behind it okay but the issue was first flagged in january of this year they came to my attention within jea executive leadership i think it was december but i don't know okay all right um on the of course my understanding uh mr de salvo that in 2022 this capacity fee problem was identified that's what i've been told correct okay you and i agree on that right has this issue ever come to the board of directors um at a regular board of director meeting no not to my knowledge i find it astounding you'll see i i hear what you're saying council members same and for all i know maybe this whole capacity fee tariff as it's called okay maybe it's something that's unenforceable or maybe it's something that needs majorly you know tweaked again or something but i'll agree there's issues with it um but it's it's very complicated i i i hear you but i'm just astounded that you as the chair were just briefed in january and this issue has not come to the board uh can i continue just for a second are you aware of a meeting that that miss cavey had with the ceo of mayo i know there was a meeting recently yes are you aware that uh has been reported to me that uh a deal was cut to where we will forgive your old fees and go forward my understanding it's not correct this is all still um i know litigation may be the wrong word but it's still in the process of determining what's going to happen but there's no deal been made from my understanding from your understanding correct okay please go ahead but those are all the questions that i had on that except for um does the does the ceo of ja have the authority to make the deal with mayo without board approval to make what deal waving capacity waving the fee or essentially negotiating a resolution to this i wouldn't think so but i can't i i don't know for sure from a legal thing yeah i'm not yeah i'm not trying to catch out i'm just genuinely curious can i jump in it's my understanding that regina ross wrote a memo to the ceo saying you cannot forgive these capacity fees they must be collected i assume you've seen that memo i did not see that memo you did not see that memo and you're aware that um the c the ja leadership questioned that and she got a second opinion have you seen that second opinion where she saw she sought outside counsel and they said the same thing i've heard that but i haven't seen the results of it but i heard she sought a second opinion did you i want to say though i really feel uncomfortable talking about anything with regina based on the attorney-client privilege thing that will be discussed tomorrow so i just want to i'm i'm not asking you to comment on i just but those are public records that i'm referring to they're they're all over the city the the original memo that she wrote and when questioned she sought outside counsel and brought that in and it supported her opinion did you attend a meeting with with mr fackler where you asked for miss ross to be removed from jea yes i did yes you did when did that occur i think octoberish maybe september maybe i can't remember what was what was the reason for requesting her removal i have my own reasons i don't want you to disclose again i'm getting back on attorney-client right now you you had reasons yourself for having her removed is that what you're saying that's correct and i assume miss cavey had reasons as well i assume you're correct okay go ahead uh what were they why did you want her removed as your attorney i'm not asking for about her counsel just why would you not want her to be your lawyer with all due respect to her and i don't want to impugn her professionalism um whenever i'd ask her for something for her advice it to me was way off the mark i saw her getting outside her box on issues that were disruptive within the uh the executive leadership team um and also just some inattention to detail uh what do you mean by disruptive just that um i'm not sure she had the confidence of everybody based on her her interactions at meetings and i'll just leave it at that i don't want to make this a personal attack on regina no no i understand uh general i think the issue is that the lawyer was asked to be removed and of course that happened the last time you weren't here for it but the lawyers kept changing when they gave advice the ceo didn't like and so it's a sensitive issue for us when ogc gets lawyers get replaced and so that's why we're drilling down on it okay but just be i i know you know this there's five lawyers at that time we had four or five lawyers other than regina so it's not like we're saying get rid of everybody from ogc that works at jay just let me know that please i'm trying to understand because i find it fascinating that you would attend a meeting um where with michael fackler requesting that that miss ross be removed and that would seem to be the ceo's responsibility her going to see mr fackler to request that i i'm i'm i'm like uh mr diamond i went through 2019 and i'm very sensitive to attorneys being removed in such a fashion it's uh it raises a red flag to me having gone through you don't have confidence and wait a minute let me let me but i find it did did she ask you to go with her did who asked me miss cavey no miss cavey didn't go with me to mr fackler you went by yourself no i went with jody brooks you went with jody brooks to see mr fackler miss cavey was not present no that was the meeting you requested that she be removed i didn't request she'd be removed i expressed my my frustration with her performance okay did you go to a meeting with miss cavey separate from that no you did not did not okay then i've gotten some bad information yeah i'm gonna it's perfect timing i was gonna ask you about jody brooks um what's her role over there cao chief administrative officer yes what what does that do i mean i can guess but can you help me out so she generally specifically actually her main job is to make sure that jea stays within all the policies from the city regulations state regulations federal regulations um yeah basically adheres all the policies it's a huge tasking and it permeates all the executive leadership um duties because again they all are subject to their regulations policies procedures etc so she's got a significant job and she's an attorney correct that is correct did she ever give you legal advice in her when i first got to ga she was the uh the legal counsel for ga so my first year i'm just trying a year and a half she was the ogc rep for us and then after that did she give you legal advice when she was cao no um go ahead please um miss ross attended all your pre-meeting prior to her removal is that correct i'm sorry council miss who miss ross regina ross attended from as the ogc representative attended all the meetings um briefing you on board meetings and such is that correct she attended all the board meetings she did not attend the pre-briefs she did not not that i recall okay now she we have so many she may have over the i think she's with us for three years if i remember right maybe on occasion she was there but not on everyone for the pre-briefs for the actual board meetings i don't think she ever missed the board meeting okay it's my understanding that she attended the the the pre-meeting review uh with each board member did each board member have their own separate pre-brief meeting you have to yes okay it's my understanding that she attended those prior to her removal just to just to establish that once she was removed did you have another ogc attorney attend any of those attend any of the pre-meetings yes if it was it was isolated but it was not routine as far as i remember it's my understanding that that you and the other board members relied on miss brooks as as as as counsel um once regina left for those pre-meetings i did not you did not can't speak for the board members no because i recognized uh jody brooks's position is as the chief admin officer not the general counsel but then who did you in those meetings who did you rely on for legal advice um i've got to tell you legal advice never came up on my mind there were no issues that i needed to to um revert to legal advice but there was no ogc representative in those meetings not that i recall thank you okay uh so just kind of going back to ms ross and i know we're focusing on this and hopefully after this we're you know we'll talk with ms brooks then we'll talk with ms kv and then hopefully that we're done with this particular line of questioning um but uh when it comes to ms ross did ms brooks and ms ross ever disagree um in a meeting with you about anything as far as legal advice um i can't name specifics but it wouldn't surprise me did ms brooks and ms ross disagree about capacity fees ever that i don't know i'm not sure and maybe i'll find out more tomorrow i'm just not sure yeah fair enough um was one of the reasons why you didn't want ms ross to continue in her role was her opinion about capacity fees no was one of the reasons because she sometimes disagreed with um jody brooks um no no sound like you had more to add there you have more to add for color on that well yeah i'll just say i and again i'm not speaking for the entire executive leadership team but in general um and i can't speak for them but in general folks i best characterize it by they weren't comfortable going to the regina for counsel okay um i'll ask one last question on this stuff and then i'll move on to combined cycle plan but on the attorney client privilege waiver issue um and i'm asking you to disclose any conversations with any lawyers but if you as a former board chair and current board member just you your vote was to just give a total waiver what's the worst that could happen if jea said yeah you can know every single thing that our lawyers have told us like i'm concerned about the president and sense but again again i'm concerned about the president sets for board members we're going to have two new board potentially two new board members coming on um and i'm just concerned about if i'm an incoming board new brand new incoming and get wind of wow they were waving an attorney client privilege i don't care how how potentially innocuous in this situation it may appear it just would rub me the wrong way big time okay but what kind of what kind of secret could get out i mean this is all public stuff there's all documents so why ask for the waiver i'll just ask you that if it's all public why ask for a waiver attorney client if you can get it in public venues i wish we could go back and forth i get to say this all the time up here but we're asking the questions but i appreciate it well that's my answer then look you could i i'm not forward right now i may change my mind tomorrow again when we do the deep dive but right now i'm not forward because what you're asking for if you can get it through public public uh processes then do it there yeah i'll just say this not necessarily for you sir but for the public listening like anything i talk about with mary stephopoulos is public there's no secrets there the only time the attorney client privilege attaches is if there's potential litigation that's it and you can read the florida circuit court cases that say the dca cases that say exactly that so to me this is this is mind-blowing but anyways we'll move on um the combined cycle plant um can i respond real quickly so i'd say this if if if the questions can be asked to the board in a public domain thing without if it can be asked that way then i highly encourage you to do it so we can get by this information bypass fair enough um the combined cycle plant for people who have no idea what this is can you give us the 20 seconds of what the combined cycle plan is yeah basically it's a significant capital project that'll reduce our carbon footprint by 40 percent it burns cleaner natural gas more efficient and it'll allow us to get on a glide path to decommission north side um uh three plant and we want to get rid of north side because it's dirty right eventually we'd like to yes when we have the technology to do it right the combined cycle plant will cost how much to build approximately one billion i believe and we had to purchase or get in line for a turbine sold by ge is that right in order to do it correct and that was 300 million dollars i i believe it was total 500 million i think that includes getting the contractor um and this is to have it in place by 2032 because there's a five-year backlog on getting these um combined cycle um and to your knowledge we have to have permission from the florida public service commission in order to build the plan it is correct do we currently have that that's in the process of getting we do not have it yet technically it's in the process of getting from what i understand how much have we already spent on the combined cycle plan i i think it's 350 million i know what you're getting at yeah so so what do we do if psc says no and they they haven't been that nice to jea in the past if they say no what are we going to do with 350 million dollars already spent yeah oh good question um the only and i i asked the same question um and as this will sound ridiculous that's part of the process psc has been aware of what we're doing if they would have saw what i've been told if they see any red flags in the process before we um contracted for the combined cycle plant they would have told us and i know believe me i i'm not a fan if that's the way of doing business guarantee me i'm okay before i go the final step uh but i've been told that's what the process is like we have not seen any red flag red flags for them so this would have to be something totally out of the blue if if the psc denies it and we're not getting net signals yet tracking okay yeah and then um he looked very eager yeah i i mean this issue is huge to me as i i think it is to you we have spent 350 million dollars that's my understanding but i i i've heard the same figure so i don't i think we're safe to say 350 it may be 500 if you consider the other parts in a situation where we're hoping and praying the psc approves this plant and do you think the other six board members understood that as well as we're saying it right now i believe they did because they all got briefed on it i believe what was the vote do you recall on the for the combined cycle plan it was unanimous it was seven nothing yes okay please go ahead um going back to just combine cycle plan here uh the the question then was to build this plant or to essentially buy power from fpl is that fair that those were kind of the two bucket options um i'm under the impression buying power from fpl was infeasible uh why it wouldn't it we it'd be uh it would be uh uh price prohibitive we paid too much and it couldn't produce as much as the combined cycle plant that's the impression i'm under yeah again i'm not playing gotcha i swear uh well if if i told you that fbl offered 30 years of energy at the basically the exact same price as building the combined cycle plant would it seem like that was a an option worth evaluating if that were true yes and somebody did evaluate and i'll admit i'll admit my ignorance i'm not sure what the showstopper was i'm under the impression that it was um they couldn't guarantee the amount of power that we needed to purchase or the price they couldn't guarantee exactly what the price would be so that made it risky but that's my impression uh from what i understood uh and i could be way off yeah and i think i know the answer to this question but do you have any knowledge at all of anybody trying to put pressure on jea to build a combined cycle plant because it was in their personal interests outside of jea no none um i'm gonna actually quite the only opposition we have was from sierra club type folks we didn't want to see it at all that's the only opposition i'm aware of tracking um i'm gonna flip to the ballard contract very quickly you've already been very candid sir that you don't know anything about it uh but let me just ask the a couple of check the box questions here uh you're aware that that ballard partners was the lobbyist for our jea at some point you knew this yes well when did you first know that ballard was your lobbyist over there the first time and i didn't even know it ballard to me was just a name that we have a um and we still do have somebody under ballard who i believe is our federal uh lobbyist if i remember right and i don't know his name um but that's about the only thing i know of ballard and and what jea uses for their services and to your knowledge was there any problem with the original awarding of the ballard contract a couple years ago i have no because i had no visibility into that so i just don't know yeah um do you have any opinion about their performance oh it was completely transparent to me quite honest quite honestly yep um have you ever do you have any personal knowledge of anyone pressuring jea to hire or not hire ballard i do not not um you're aware that there's a now uh investigation into bid rigging on the ballard contract right into what i'm sorry into the ballard contract you realize there's an investigation going now yes i've heard of it yeah um if it is true that someone pressured the ceo to not hire ballard or not use them would you have had a problem with that if somebody pressured the ceo not to hire somebody under ballard yeah to hire ballard or not hire them i'd be up to her decision on on why or why not to do it to renew it let me ask a better question okay do you think it's right for the mayor to have an opinion about who jea uses for their lobbying contracts from a political perspective yes i can see her point you think the mayor should be able to push the ceo i just i can understand why she'd do it do i say it's right or wrong i'm not going to comment on that but it doesn't surprise me something with to come out of the mayor's office like that you don't think it's wrong for the mayor to try to influence the ceo of jea on the awarding of a contract um i don't no one should try and influence the the ceo and i'm not aware that she tried to do that yeah i'm just asking what your opinion is about that kind of behavior no you it should again it gets back to my opening statement jea is an independent authority and they should be shielded this ends naive shielded from political gamesmanship yeah no i i would like the same result let me ask you this the 140 million dollars that the city of jacksonville gets from jea every year have you heard anyone trying to pressure jea to do more no i'm not aware of any and i think that 140 is actually above the average one time above the average for a number right sure uh well since you're here um if we weren't doing that would we still have to raise rates on the ratepayers in jacksonville if the city wasn't getting the 140 million or whatever the fee is we're going to have to um well again it's it's good timing because we have our rates hearing tomorrow but the rates we'd still have to based on the capital expenditures that are confronting us for the next five years with water wastewater and electricity i think we are going to have to raise rates but we're going to obviously that's that's the next uh four months of determining if we need to because we need to come back to city council with that i think in may time frame or june thank you councilmember diamond last year the jea gave the city a one-time 40 million dollar payment you're aware of that yes okay are you aware of any discussions of a second payment above the normal um 120 130 million dollars that the the administration has requested to the board or to miss cavey i'm not aware of it no you're not aware of anything no thank you um let me uh skip to the board meeting on february 24th sorry ron i have to ask about this just because i was there it's a little frustrating i think everybody was a little frustrated um on both ends yeah i know i could see uh so you're aware that each of the independent authorities have a council liaison correct you understand the purpose of that is for us to have somebody over there who can participate um councilman salem twice tried to speak during that both times can i read yeah i'm gonna let you go like both times you barked him down and said you're not recognizing him why okay one it's and with all due respect it all started uh when we approved the agenda and the first comment from from uh council member salem was um why isn't the executive committee slating on this agenda we had already approved the agenda as board chair i approved the agenda and that was not part of it based on the ramifications of why we need to redo the slating for that and just with all due respect and council member salem when you objected to that not being on the agenda that's not under the purview of the council liaison the board had approved it so it's open for discussion number two when we started discussing the vote of confidence okay then that's the second time council member salem has to be recognized i said no it's a board member discussion on a very sensitive matter and that's reserved for board members we have the luxury of getting together once a month period and i was not going to let this meeting get hijacked by an external person in my opinion all due respect you were acting like you're a minimum an ex officio board member you're not you're a liaison the board needed time to discuss this very sensitive issue amongst themselves and they did and there was also a comment made by the board abrogated their leadership by just sitting on their hands no one sat on their hands you were there they discussed this for 12 to 15 minutes every board member spoke up even the one dissenter but everybody had the opportunity to speak up and i'll just tell you i'm thin-skinned on one thing when people criticize the board especially this current board these folks work their butts off and they're not afraid to express their opinion and i was proud of the board because they didn't default and say no we're not going to do this vote of confidence for vicky uh we need to discuss it no one abstained they all voted and i think they showed courage in doing that okay well let's let's unpack a couple of pieces of these yes so um what do you think that the city council's business is when it comes to jea are there things that are just totally yours and stuff that's ours or there's there's for the city council and jea there's plenty of room for collaboration frank dialogue etc don't conflate that with a city liaison council liaison city council liaison and i've looked it up actually it's very loosely defined what the purpose of that is and quite frankly as best i can tell it's up to the board chair to see what role the city council liaison has at board meetings in my two years it was listen and then get back to city council on whatever you observe with an opportunity at the beginning to tell us if there's anything on the city council's radar if that doesn't if that rubs the wrong way with a city liaison um okay no one ever brought me in on a discussion on what that should entail i guess the good news is though you got a new chair to see what that relationship is i mean i mean can i jump in please the previous liaison um could only speak during that comment time where he is listed on the agenda that was miss cavey's rule no i it's it that precede since i've been on the council uh chair um prior randy the four if i remember right then um then council member boylan um we never had i'll just tell you we never had any issues and by the way they would speak on occasion with something that was appropriate no big deal look let me finish if i can i'm he was restricted because i met with miss cavey when i was appointed by the president to serve as the liaison i went to miss cavey and she said this is when you can speak during your the liaison's report and i said i am a city councilman representing 19 if i can't speak during the meeting i don't want to be the liaison i went to you i don't know if you remember i went to you and said i want to be able to ask questions throughout the meeting and you said that'll be fine do you recall that discussion absolutely do not okay i do not but you don't recall that okay that's fine um okay um the uh executive slate was pulled from the agenda whose decision was that yours that was my decision as one as chair of the executive committee and then also as a chair of the board did anybody ask you to pull it nope just totally your decision why did you well because we had a the current slate which again all due respect to board member morales so we have him get outside his lane go to vicky ask for a resignation without consulting the fellow board members he did this after he was slated to be the chair so common sense who on earth would want to still maintain that same slate when we know we got an aggressive anti-ceo becoming chair that's not fair to vicky that's not fair to the other board members before before they could voice do they support vicky or not which they eventually did i got you so that's it's common sense why i had to cancel that slate so mr morales um in that board meeting he goes out and he says i went and talked to a dozen or so leaders at jea because i'm an incoming board chair and during that and this is just what he said in the meeting you were there i was there he says i learned that there was a bunch of problems right um and then he had these meetings with vicky let's put aside the meeting with vicky and the resignation all that stuff just like he comes back and he says there's a bunch of problems do you do you think that he heard from employees that there are bunch of problems or that he's just contriving this i don't know i'm not i i have no idea i'm just my own personal opinion is he should have he should have brought this up with all the board members yeah sure but i mean do you think he was telling the truth i'm not i i don't know i don't know okay um the uh motion was made by mr morales to do an investigation into the stuff he said he heard it was correct it was an external investigation and we said we will do our internal jea processes yeah he couldn't get a second on it correct that is correct why not second the motion for discussion to see if that's a better process to go given that the allegations were about hr sure because and there was before before that motion was not voted on because no one would second it if i recall correctly people did discuss we have our own internal processes why would we punt those to to city council to somebody else when we have our own processes which are uh in place to field such complaints to see if there is validity but did you think that what he was asking for a city council to do or like a an outside law firm coming in and doing an investigation he was asking for somebody outside of jea processes that's what he was asking for when why not let us use our own processes first it's it's just so i understand you don't think that he wanted you all to hire a law firm on the outside to investigate jea you think he wanted to do something just totally rogue no he may have wanted and well yeah he wanted an outside entity to look into it instead of using our own internal processes what was wrong with an outside entity looking at allegations of racism toxic culture why not do it you can do it when it's warranted but if we have processes in place for jea to do that why not use those first yeah if they come out to be uh ineffective got it yeah so you have those internal structures and for a purpose i'm tracking uh but you've stated that the allegations were unsupported it's just 12 people it didn't meet the standard you're saying that all this stuff like what is the threshold is 12 people enough these allegations of racism enough well again we we sort of talked this i think half an hour ago i don't know but when you got such a low percentage and you're making it sound like it's a systemic endemic problem that's that you're jumping the gun way or way too early till we find out how significant those are isn't that the point we don't know isn't that the point though you get reports in that there's a problem right and then you go and do an external investigation to make sure right you because i mean why do you keep saying it's such a small percentage but you say by definition anybody who comes forward is going to be less than 2000 people you say maybe we're talking past each other investigation is warranted if it's one person investigate and we have processes to do that but um council member diamond you keep saying an external investigation i'm not sure why do you keep harping on it sounds to me maybe i'm misreading you that you don't think jea has processes from hr ethics etc to do an own internal investigation it sounds like you don't think we have that capability yeah no no okay so this is worth a second here just so i'll define this down for definitions certainly you have internal processes someone makes an hr complaint there's an hr process that goes all right and also an ethics hotline and ethics hotline i'm sure whistleblower protections all the rest okay fully fully tracking the process is all report up to the ceo correct ultimately yes and to the board and to the board okay so if the problem is with the ceo which is what many of these allegations were doesn't it make sense to have a process that doesn't report up to the ceo in order to make sure a proper investigation is done right and that process again will come to the board not to the ceo okay um let me keep going on the board meeting and i only have a couple more questions here so we can no please the as was previously stated the the motion was was not seconded so there was no discussion on the morales and i think he used the word survey as i recall because i spoke to him um prior to the meeting and we did a survey ourselves for an employee within the city council and used that survey to it was an outside survey so i i and i think he actually used the city council's name uh similar to what the city council has done in his in his wording on his motion that was not seconded but but yet that was there was no second no process in place other than your internal processes which i'm told by many jea employees they're afraid to go through those internal processes because it does go up to the ceo which they claim is the problem so the the need for which to me then three weeks after the meeting let me make my statement then i'll ask you the question three weeks after the meeting you uh boom there's this we're gonna hire this law firm they're gonna come in at 380 an hour to talk to our employees and they're gonna hire a firm at a hundred plus thousand dollars to do a survey so i'm trying to understand who initiated that three weeks after the board meeting where he we couldn't get a second for discussion who initiated that survey and that law firm do you know i think we're complaining two things as i said before we have an engagement employee survey that was already in the works before any sick commission was stood up anything that was already in the works and that's to again pull uh employees on what's good what are sustained what needs improved that was already in the works before any of the accusations of toxicity or discrimination mr salvo let me read you a statement this is the letter from from um kathy christy gavin one of your attorneys yep she initiated this and this is to empath employment in hr law okay jackson lewis correct pardon me is this the jackson lewis letter no no this is an empath employment in hr law there's no jackson lewis on here let me read you a sentence from this the scope of the engagement the purpose of the investigation is to make findings of facts and conclusions concerning allegations raised during the february 24th 2026 je board meeting regarding jea work environment complaints i'm just astounded that that sentence is there when there was no second to the motion to have a discussion that's for and i'm assuming this this entity is hired by jackson lewis okay okay i don't know i'm not even sure you're aware of this well i i'm not but i'll just tell you i again and then let me make one other comment and then i called jody brooks and found out there was one complaint after the board meeting and i have it here one complaint and uh from one employee anonymous that reference some of the stuff that we've talked about and and i think you said that that the investigation was initiated due to the one complaint after the meeting anonymous complaint to your hotline is that correct no the the investigation that was initiated about the toxic toxicity and description and discrimination that's the internal one that we started based on the sick the the formation of the sick to look into these allegations so we said okay you we hear allegations we will look into it that's what that letter is about i don't know i guess uh chair i don't understand you're astounded by what i'm astounded that you couldn't get a second at a meeting to have a discussion about the culture and three weeks later in between two board meetings there wasn't even a discussion about this we we did not motion we did not act on a motion because we couldn't get one to get an external evaluation but that's what this is no this that's what this is this is that i believe and i haven't i i don't see the paper i'd have to read it i believe that's when jay said we're hearing noise about discrimination toxicity we will look into it and this is how that's what that is that was not what rick morales was asking for about us to seed investigatory uh an investigation on our culture to an outside entity i i i think we just have a disagreement it might be it might be certain things that have occurred okay go ahead council member diamond yeah i'm almost done i mean it's uh 235 we've been going for a while so thank you for your patience i know this is this isn't a great fun um so just uh finish up on the meeting um before the february 24th meeting had there been any investigation done on the claims of racism not to my knowledge no before the board meeting was there any investigation done on the claims of toxic work environment no before that board meeting was there any investigation done on the issues related to capacity fees were there any meetings on investigations wait investigations on investigation yeah not that i'm aware of there was discussion within the executive leadership on capacity fees with the mail thing but yeah and uh before the february 24th meeting was there any investigation on issues with the ballard contract no investigations i'm aware of so you were aware of allegations of racism toxic work environment issues with capacity fees and the bowered contract and you made a motion for a vote of confidence without any investigation yes okay i've just got a couple follow-up and then i'll go to miss pitman when you were chair were you provided a guideline for the meeting to follow by the staff when you were chairman yes what were the other board members provided the same guidelines yeah we all get the agenda that walks through everything now i'm not talking about the agenda i'm talking about a document that that goes through every single item and provides guidance for you and other board members what do you mean like whatever the topics are we get a background just all the associated material but i'm sort of confused what do you mean guidance sort of a script of how things are going to occur you provided that and it guides you through the meeting if you're a committee chair and you do a report on as a result of committee yes the admin people will do up a script for what transpired at that then it's up to the committee chairs to use it or use their own notes but as its chair going into a board meeting you have a script of some sort in front of you that's different from the agenda no i but maybe i'm missing so i'm not sure what you mean chair by a script for what what's the script do a flow of the meeting identifying where you need to take votes and where you don't need to take votes and motions and that kind of thing no i do not have a script i just go by the agenda and where i see action parentheses action that's when i know i need to uh ask for a motion to action but i don't use a script i don't get a script saying as i go from public comments to whatever to whatever this is what you need to say no how was the what was the vote of confidence that you provided miss cavey purely spontaneous it was me i didn't get my question out but i appreciate your response it was purely spontaneous yes not part of a script or anything else no the reason i'm asking these questions what we had a problem in 2019 of a script of board members uh having something in front of them which in my mind created a serious problem of board members not thinking so the the vote of confidence if we did a public records request it was a spontaneous uh action upon on your part absolutely yeah i don't use scripts okay okay miss pitman do you have anything to the chair and the only other thing i have general and and i don't know the process again i think a lot of what we're discussing is is process um even talking to past employees i don't know what the process is before they leave if they have like an exit interview or something like that um have there ever been any information regarding you know sometimes you have you know if i if i could make a recommendation since i'm leaving or i'm retiring i would like to make recommendations and have you ever had any of that or do you all have any information that has um culminate all of those you know within the last three to four years or where we're where we're talking about um i i would like to know that um or any recommendations from the leadership team of what they have heard in previous years i think a lot of the questions that i wanted to ask and answers to we've already put in writing but based on the conversation and questions by my colleagues i mean which dug a little bit deeper um than what was requested and you know i'm only asking these questions because of conversations um that i've had and i just wanted you know i'm a fair person and i want to be fair in this process as well um but going forward we can always complain about what's not right but where do we go from here in terms of a solution and the assurance going forward because right now the the current or existing staff doesn't believe in the process right now right and so and the ones that have left have mentioned the process so i just i i behold the board the leadership staff and miss cavey to look internally because if no one is at the table or or have a seat at the table and feel comfortable in an environment to ask the questions that should be asked no one's going to do it and it's just like me on this committee you know i probably wouldn't be on this committee if someone hadn't come to me or the conversations i've had after the meetings that we've had so all i'm saying today you know from what my point is mr chair is to check and dig a little bit deeper and have a process where you have documentation and data that can reflect what you just said from as as a board of directors and the information that you get from your leadership team thank you mr president you're recognized thank you mr chairman and thank you to the members of the committee and to general for coming up and speaking as mr diamond alluded to none of this is easy but we're just trying to get questions out there and you did a great job answering all these questions but i want to give you the benefit of the doubt and revert back to a question that was asked by councilman diamond that that you didn't answer in the very beginning as to your written statement you came out with a 12-minute written statement uh and he asked if you had any assistance with that you said yes he asked if it was vicki cavey you said no he asked if it was ogc you said no was it a private attorney that helped you with the statement no it wasn't was it jody brooks who helped you with the statement no it wasn't was it a jea employee it was a contracted jea employee okay and the reason why i'm getting to it is the statement is very opinionated which you're entitled to your opinion especially with the matter of the attorney-client privilege that we're asking you guys to decide as a board do you know if your statement or any of those prepared remarks were sent to the board member in advance the board members in advance of tomorrow's meeting not to my knowledge no all right i just wanted to give you a chance to answer that question and then one other question real quick that just kind of uh seemed like it wasn't answered or that you brought up in the meeting the board meeting where um councilman salem was was not allowed to speak you mentioned that you removed the item off the agenda because there was an anti-ceo board member and so your feelings were that because of mr morales was anti-ceo you didn't want to to carry that motion forward correct how did you know that he was an anti-ceo board member what what discussions did you have with with him or with miss cavey or anyone that led you to believe that he was against the ceo he told me rick told me rick told you yes okay and i should correct jody brooks also took a look at my draft statement okay would you consider that legal advice no okay those are the questions i had just wanted to follow up i think the committee's done a great job and keeping this straightforward answering questions not getting emotional not getting upset not getting triggered we're just here trying to find the truth on what's going on with our public utility so thank you mr chair that's all i have mr peluso you have three minutes thank you chair i appreciate the three minutes uh general thank you for coming here today i appreciate it um have you ever done and one of these in front of the u.s senate yes twice was that more or less stressful than this about the same so congratulations guys uh uh to the general uh to that point um you were a three-star gentleman before you came into this role correct correct would you say that those roles are very stressful sure would you say that you've worked with attorneys in the past during those roles jag officers included sure is there ever a time where you've had an issue with one of those attorneys no now no no issues um and yes there were disagreements with their advice what they were advising me on and and that happens occasionally have you worked with other attorneys at jae in the past um yes again when jody brooks was the ogc and then the new folks yeah point being is you've never had up until recently right through your how about this let's go back a little bit given your time that you were a three-star general you were approved by the u.s senate multiple times for your promotions obviously you have a very decorated career would you say that you are maybe a a well-received leader and expert in management yes but it's ultimately up to the folks who are managing they get the last vote obviously well the united states senate and the president united states selected you to be a leader did they not so one would say that you are an expert on leadership and management so one would think that if you've never had an incident with other attorneys in the past where you've asked for their removal or wish for them to maybe have somebody else work in their stead this is the one time that it's happened that maybe that's a serious thing that maybe board members here should consider or that city council members should consider yeah but i would say they shouldn't consider it unusually they're just the degree of how comfortable a client is with this attorney understood and i appreciate that would you say that some of the questions today were very much misleading um i don't want to say misleading they were hard i understand from their perspectives where these questions came from um and i just hope they understand my perspective of how i answered as a leader yourself do you still have confidence in miss cavey absolutely you believe the board has confidence in miss cavey absolutely do you believe that some of the questions here today were meant to create news headlines to make it seem like miss cavey is creating a more toxic environment than what you believe as a leader she is i'm not sure how much will come out of this with with those themes you just said i'll just say my impression there's been a steady drumbeat of that understood uh mr chair if you just wouldn't mind i'd like to say a few more things for one we do have the oig who's investigating the the fees right we know that's happening right now we have the state attorney's office looking into the ballard contract that's what's happening right now let me correct you go ahead let me correct you the oig is not looking at capacity fees he asked us to look at capacity fees he doesn't he doesn't have the ability to or the staff to do to do the review of capacity fees that's why he came to the president and and put it into this committee did the oig ask for the president to create this committee did the oig ask for the assistance of our auditors well i'm not going to get into all that but i'm just saying the oig is not inspect is not reviewing capacity fees that just wanted to correct that point understood but they could i'll give you another minute thank you i thank you chair i appreciate that but they could they could so long as we allow for auditors to to work directly with them and we wouldn't have to have this this committee uh and like i said state attorney's office looking to the ballard contract oig could be looking to the fees with the assistance of our auditors and the jea board is doing this survey to ensure that the uh the personnel working for jea are feeling comfortable in their roles now you've done general you've done i assume in your time as a military officer um climate surveys in the past have you not they're very common right as a leader myself i'm a commander in the navy um they're very common to do and so we we trust that those surveys are done you know accurately and independently and so i i trust that jea will be doing this the point being is i feel like we are in a place now where given what has occurred today and given what's occurred over the past several weeks the amount of headlines and news stories this this should not continue in this current path we should take a step back we should push pause we should allow for this survey to come out we should allow for the state attorney's office to do what they're supposed to do we should allow the oig to work with our auditors independently that's what i have to say thank you thank you councilmember diamond you're recognized oh someone who has some Tylenol for jimmy his back must hurt for carrying all that water from the mayor um uh sorry i couldn't help it uh the uh i have nothing more for the witness i really appreciate you being here sir like genuinely i know you have better things to do but um it's good service the uh stuff i do care about though just i have to mention rick morales while i'm up here because i have the platform and this is not a comment on uh the testimony today but i just have to say he's literally one of the most honest decent people i've ever met in jacksonville and if he says something i believe him and i just feel the need to say that um the other is that i have a request uh that some of this stuff is just like just shiny objects right some of the stuff is not real it doesn't really affect rates it doesn't affect the employees it doesn't affect um the finances of ja but some of its core and i'm a little worried that we've shipped off some of the into the shiny object land and not on the core stuff so to the council president the thing that i'm the most worried about is a combined cycle point and not that they need another set of eyes but that this is our most important asset as a city and i remember plant vocal very well and it's been awful to try and deal with that i don't know if this is 2.0 vogel but i think that we need to know and have a seat at the table on those decisions especially since our liaison is not going to get you know any seat at the table so i would ask that that our sick be expanded just to include that just so we have in our report an understanding of where we are today on combined cycle and frankly the ballard contract is concerning to me bid rigging is concerning to me i'll throw that out there too but mostly combined cycle plan is what i'm worried about and and i can't do it privately so i have to do it publicly uh thank you through the chair to councilman diamond i'll i'll get with our legal counsel and look into what it takes to amend you know the sick and if we need to add that charge i wasn't really familiar with what we learned about today but the fact that we might have 350 dollars excuse me 350 million dollars invested in something that hasn't totally been approved is it's something worth looking into so i'll get with uh council and we'll see about uh adding that to the sick okay i i want to make one last comment uh first of all thank you very much for coming mr disalvo you answered the questions as best you could and i appreciate that number two um there's been uh percentages used on jea employees and i think you've used them uh less than one percent and etc 2 000 employees 12 complaints or something in that nature i don't think any of us are of the belief that uh there are all the employees out in the field have any issue with vicki cavey they rarely see her when they do she's probably out there cutting a ribbon or something like that which is why our our survey is targeted to those people that work in that building there's 140 of them we've identified that are managers and above now what i don't know is how many of those regularly interact with miss cavey and one of the questions we're going to ask specifically is that because we want to know if you're interacting with miss cavey and have you had a toxic work environment when you have interacted with her we're trying to be as targeted as we can because i want the truth and i know these two people want the truth so we're being i spent an enormous amount of time in the last two weeks working with mr teal and the survey company to make sure that we can get the information that is specific to this situation for those people that might be impacted so with that that i just want to put that on the record thank you again for coming we are adjourned you