good afternoon let me call the special committee on jea to order it is just a little bit after one o'clock and uh let's start with introductions to my far left colleen hamsey council research mary stefopolis office of general counsel brian parks council auditor's office kim taylor council auditor teal council secretary and legislative council good afternoon rory diamond district 13 the beaches ron salem group two at large jacoby pitman district 10. okay thank you everybody for joining us um i don't know that the meeting will go on very long but uh we'll get through the information we've got let me start with uh miss taylor and an update on capacity fees or is mr parks going to do that i guess he needs to okay through the committee yeah through the through the chair to the committee um not a lot have we been able to get going since the last meeting however we did just recently receive the data so we are going to be able to push through on getting things moving forward there is a chance we could be ready but you know what i mean to be done with things by the you know our next meet that not the next one but the last one in june it's just as you know it depends on how things are as we go through it so if things are able to be verified very easily then it'll be we will be on that point we'll at least be able to provide an update with what we've seen at that point and some numbers and stuff like that no matter what so i mean clearly this analysis is going to go beyond june 30th if necessary yes it will it'll will take the time that it needs you know what i mean to get it right yes i think that's extremely important now when you say the data brian can you be more specific on the data that you've received does this for example does this go back to 1997 data or is this all the data that involves capacity fees for all the major companies etc we have just recently gotten this so i can't exactly tell you what is all in this no matter what we're going to have to go back with them and actually observe certain pools of some of this information because we can't just rely on that piece we are also going to have to do samples but there may be different ways to go about validating data because of the capacity fees in place at different points in time and whether or not change so i can't say how far back their analysis has already went but we will go back as far as we can and i think no matter what we would be able to pick up the still the amount that would be potentially owed or what what was not collected based on this and the data we have okay i don't see anybody in the queue so we're we're eagerly awaiting all that information uh okay let's talk about the employee survey um let me begin by saying um i think all of you have copies of this in front of you i've also uh was was provided a copy of the jea survey that went out uh just recently and uh reviewed it and it their survey is i believe one that they do they've told us every other year lasted it in 24 they're doing it in 26 it is it is more of a temperature check is what i how i would define it very broad uh survey about jea in general goes out to all employees some well over 2 000 employees that respond to that it is not specific to really to any individual um in their particular survey and i don't know when that's going to be completed but that's one of the surveys jea has referred to when they say they are performing a survey the second survey that they're doing that i don't know very much about is where they've hired this law firm that is uh trying to set up a appointment with various people to talk to them about what they know about the culture within jea particularly at the senior leadership team level um i don't know who they've met with i did get a call and i declined to to participate but um they are uh meeting with people don't know when that will be completed um sure miss pittman i just wanted to um ask you mentioned about a survey that has i guess more temperature check generality um we've never been in this space before so the questions that they've asked i guess in the past may not be particularly to the culture of the workforce or can you share any of the questions in terms of just comparing i'll be happy to provide you a copy of this survey okay i would appreciate that mr teal has them as well um i'll read you the first five or six of these to give you some feel for labor for it i i feel genuinely appreciated at jea and i guess it would be like a one to five scale how you would score that jea operates by strong values i feel included at jea my pay is fair for work i do i feel well informed about important decisions at jea those are the first five or six that are there new ideas encouraged at jea at jea we do things efficiently and well and it goes on there's about what 25 questions mr teal on their survey okay i would i would really like to see that to compare the questions that they have um to the questions that were designed for this survey for our survey and as you mentioned we don't know what the other survey is is that correct yeah it it i know it is an interview survey okay they are they are actually interviewing various individuals uh that that want to be interviewed okay so i i you know i want to say it may be a little bit different because these questions are very specific and detailed and the questions that you just asked are very general and they're not detailed and i guess my other question i would like to ask um do we know if the employees are doing both um surveys or not mr till through the chair councilmember pitman um they have the opportunity to do both um now uh when i say the employees um as council member salem indicated the survey that jea is doing is is is company-wide so it's 2 000 plus employees okay um the one that we're doing would be targeted to just those individuals that were designated by jea as like senior management or management uh and above managers and above and so it's about 150 people um that that the sick committee's survey would be targeting um so that that 150 would have the opportunity to do both um but the rest of the 2 000 employees would not have the opportunity to do the one that sick is doing so again those numbers could be screwed because you're talking about apple oranges and grapefruit right so um i know some of the individuals that i spoke with um two of them said that they would do both the other ones said no they will not so you know it's kind of hard to um compare and um i i don't know that that would be kind of hard i don't think you can compare and we'll we're about ready to get into it our survey to to the jea 2000 people survey they're two different surveys our charge was the culture created by the ceo so our questions are very will be very specific to that particular person and the culture racism particularly that may be going involved yes sir okay and we can talk a little bit more about some um as we get into it as well thank you so with that um why don't we get into the survey um that all of you should have a copy of um i reviewed it over the weekend and have spoken to mr mr teal a little bit um there are several references to senior leadership in in the in our survey and i've asked mr teal to remove that because i don't want to confuse the issue of um senior leadership versus miss cavey particularly so any references to senior leadership will be removed and it will only reference uh vicky cavey and these 20 or 25 questions that are here um other than that um i thought the survey was uh on on target addressed the issues that we have and uh also gave an opportunity at the end for any freelance comments they want to make uh back to us and um mr diamond go ahead if did you have a comment yeah just briefly i yeah i support your change on the senior leadership i it was confusing um and i think that brings up another question is do you want any other names on here uh i do think the coo might maybe one question uh or so there it's up to you i'm not passionate about it one way or the other the other thing is i do think we should just ask do you feel comfortable taking surveys that they'll be anonymous just you know what is the value of this because the people still even up all this effort we've gone to still don't feel like they can be honest on here i would like to know uh because i would weigh the results a little bit on that and i would also weigh the jea surveys results on how people feel about it well one of the things that i know mr teal is going to get into is the sometimes the response to a server like this does tell you something if if only five people respond to this survey i i think that's an indication that they they don't want to respond to the survey so i know um the survey company is going to send out and mr i'm jumping ahead a little bit but they're going to send out a letter several days before the survey goes out to those 150 plus people and say the city council survey will be in your inbox by x date please this is how you can respond you can copy it into your own browser at home or your own phone personal computer to respond however you want to there'll be several reminders uh after that once a week or so and we'll continue that until we see that we're not getting a whole lot more in and then it'll be fairly concluded mr teal did i capture that pretty accurately you did uh and so that was one of the recommendations from the uh the selection link uh is that especially in light of this that this is going to be the city council survey is to do uh two things in that welcome letter one is is to expect that you will get a survey from the city of jacksonville but also that if they wanted to communicate with selection link is to provide them with a separate email that they would like to send that survey to so it doesn't even come to their jea email then they'll have the ability to do that that helps with the whole anonymity aspect i do like the question though of you know like for example a question of um i feel comfortable being completely honest in the survey commissioned by jea strongly agree or strongly disagree or whatever that range is you know and that way we can kind of gauge that level of activity as well uh through the chair to jason um in the initial email and these follow-up emails i mean can we just like make it painfully obvious that this is not going back to jea that it's completely anonymous like like i really just want to get honest answers out of folks and i feel if they feel comfortable that it's not coming to any of their bosses they that they will right i think they'll trust us but we're going to make it like painfully obvious can i just add before you respond keep in mind the survey results are going to the jea board but it'll be done in a and in a fashion that it'll be grouped together will be very anonymous to the individual responder mr teal go ahead through the chair to council member diamond yeah that's some language that we're going to have in the initial letter to them is is that none of the data uh or information that is provided to uh selection link in response to this will be accessible by anybody at jea so it is to you know beat them over the head with the fact that this is this is a an outside entity that's conducting this um within the city of jackson obviously it's not jea and so only those results as council member salem indicated once they're compiled that will be made available to the jea board but that was one of the reasons why it was such a importance i guess for the city council to engage its own survey so that city council's paying for it city council's responsible for it so that way we can communicate to those people hey you know this is this is not even going to be seen by jea and i should also just add on to that the boylan amendment that came through during uh uh at the council meeting was that um select link allows one presentation of the data and he his motion was that that presentation be offered to the jea board where it could be presented to them in a more in a very uh professional fashion and they could be able to ask questions and that kind of thing so we will offer that to them once the survey is completed miss pitman yes i want to go back to um you mentioned that you you think that the names should be taken off of our survey is that correct i just said the any reference to senior leadership team should be taken out and only vicky kb's name be used in terms of how they're evaluating because that was sort of that was the charge of the of the culture that she was uh um responsible for okay i just want to make sure i understand um because a lot of the um complaints were about either her or mainly miss miss mosher so i just want to make sure that because if you you start because we wouldn't be here if we didn't know the names right so um i don't want to make it so generic that the charge is not done right and that we get the answers um that we want and and the information is clarified um at the end of the day so i mean i i mean some of the questions might be asked in a different way but it's it's i guess it's getting to what what we're needing to know um so i just want to make sure i understand that i think it's important um that we do because these are those are the individuals that that are testifying and coming here and you know i don't want to talk to you about something else after this to see if it's possible um to do well just to respond to that and to councilmember diamond's comments earlier if there's one other person that i'd like to see surveyed it would be diane moser because her name has come up um several several times to me um mr t i don't know if we can do that or how we would do that i think it it it may be very difficult unless they're asked to freelance any other comments that would be one way to do it would be to um propose a question at the end is is there anything else that you would like to uh to to bring to management's attention or bring to the city council's attention you know that kind of thing i think officially the only way to do it would be to amend the charge of the sic at this point it seems um i don't know how practical that that would be um given the the deadlines for completion of it um but remember that the charge is to to look at the toxic work environment allegations as they pertain specifically to the ceo and i just think with what we know now and what we knew at the beginning of the charge is a little bit different right um because you've had employees to come forward and we have information that we didn't have before so i i would like to maybe include that question anyone else or any other issues that you would like to bring forward because then that just kind of capsulates everything that we currently have and to amend what we know now and what we didn't know before i agree i think a couple of questions at the end where they can freelance um comments about any other members of the senior leadership team or any other information that they think we should we should have mr teal would be very appropriate i think it would capture what miss pitman and i agree with her uh i i don't want to reopen the sick or do anything like that at this point so i think that's the best way to probably capture it we okay okay what i'd like to see us and uh well i i want miss pitman said she i think miss pitman has possibly another issue she wants to bring up with some other employees yeah well i tell you what why don't we uh at this point adopt the survey as as indicated here so mr teal can can run with it i have a motion on the floor second any further discussion oh mr teal we could um provide a little flexibility in terms of being able to make minor changes you know that kind of thing uh as opposed to verbatim um and you would correct some spellings and that kind of thing but yeah the the the only issue i think is is that i think there's 25 questions here um whether you feel like that's a sufficient amount we're going to add a couple more in in terms of um the comfortable with the hourly or being honest in a survey conducted by jea as well as the questions about members other members of senior leadership you want to cap the number of questions or um you know just uh any any direction along those lines or you want to just provide the flexibility to just kind of my experience having done this 40 years ago in academics if you get beyond about 10 or 15 minutes you're going to lose people so i think that this is in that area i i would other than the freelance questions at the end i would not add any questions i think it's it's probably pretty good as it is and as far as i think the motion was made to allow you any other minor changes that you want to make but i think what we're saying is we want that survey to to move forward as quickly as we can okay all those in favor please indicate by saying aye aye aye all those opposed nay motion passes miss pitman you had another issue one you wanted to bring up i just wanted to bring this up i know before you all were asking about would any of the employees feel comfortable um coming either current and or people who are gone i did have an opportunity to talk to a few of them and they don't mind coming to um testify um but they want to make sure that they are protected um and that they would be um no backlash you know with them being or repercussions for them being um coming to here to share so i wanted to just i don't know where to land that um so i'm i guess i'm asking because i know when we first started out um that was one of the questions because you didn't know uh one i guess the letters that i had um where they were coming from and of course they will be turned over the letters that i have um to you jason um but they've gotten to the point i think they may be ready to talk so you know if that is still needed um i i think that's something that is a possibility but i just want to make sure that they are protected in their positions through the charity council member piven uh ma'am what i would probably suggest is maybe give me an opportunity to meet with them um because there are certain protections under the whistleblower laws that um that can be afforded to employees now the determiner of who is who is given whistleblower protection uh is either the ig or the um human rights commission folks um i think uh it's human rights but i know the ig uh but um probably you know if they're former employees you know then there may be you know like we had talked we'd heard that there were some non-disclosure agreements that were signed and those kinds of things i want to make sure that they're not going to run afoul of of any agreements that they've got with with jea um and also you know kind of maybe get a feel for the type of information that they they would have um and so that might be the best thing to do is to to to have me sit down and meet with them kind of talk through some of the issues and what their concerns are and then see if if um we can point them in the right direction for whistleblower protection uh or you know some other kind of thing um i would like if possible to engage um some ogc folks in our employment section uh to maybe have uh an understanding is as to what types of things might be protected or not protected you know but um but that might be the best way to do it as opposed to just bringing them forward and just kind of on the fly you know be like okay you can or you can't talk about that um and that might be a good way to handle it but again it's the discretion of the committee i just i just want to have clarification because i know that that that did come up and you know we were telling them to go other places and contact so if that you know if we don't need it then fine um this is something that we don't have to do but i told you all i would get back with you and let you know i mean it it took me a little while because i think they were a little bit apprehensive and and so um i just wanted to make sure if that you know came a time that we need to speak to someone than we could if not i don't i don't think it matter at this point to them um either or um but you all will have the the information that you requested okay thank you okay anything else anybody has just to recap the schedule the next meeting in two weeks we will have uh um jody brooks along with regina ross testifying and come yeah thank you for reminding me combined cycle in the morning at i think we said 11 o'clock and then the two in the afternoon and uh on two weeks from then june 22nd is vicky cavey and i have spoken to regina ross and she is she does want to testify after vicky cavey as well that was included in her subpoena so there's no issue there so she will be able to give her comments regarding miss cavey's uh comments so that's the plan for the next two weeks um any next four weeks essentially any comments okay we are adjourned