It is 9 o'clock. I'll call the Transportation, Energy, and Utilities Committee meeting to order and begin with introductions from my left. Good morning. Bill Delaney, Mayor's Office. Stephen Libby, Council Research. Carla Schell, Office of General Counsel. Edward Linsky, Council Auditor's Office. Good morning. Tyrone Clark-Murray, District 9. Good morning. Matt Carlucci at Large Group 4. Jacoby Pittman, District 10. Ken Amara, City Council, District 1. Good morning, everyone. How are we doing today? Jimmy Peluso, City Council, District 7. Good morning, Rawway Area, District 11. Thank you, everyone. I'm going to reserve my remarks about Mr. Peluso for at the end of the meeting. As you look at your agenda, nothing is going to be taken out of order. Council President Mr. Howland might be here. He may not. We have a couple of bills on the agenda for him. This morning, we're going to begin our meeting with a presentation from the Jacksonville Electric Authority. This being the TEU, I thought it wise for them to come and share with us what's taking place with the project that's already on the way. I forget what it's called, but it's the extending of the power lines or the raising of the power lines across the river. And I thought it would be a good moment to edify many of us here at the committee as to the work that's being done. Over the past year, we have approved the funding for this project. So we'll begin with J.E.A., if you would come and please introduce yourself and do your presentation, Mr. Shea Hill. Good morning, Shea Hill, J.E.A. Today, we have a presentation on the Fulton Cut Transmission Line Clearance. And we will have Daryl Hamilton, who is our manager of transmission and substations, the subject matter expert in this matter, come up and do a presentation for you. Thank you for your time. Good morning. I'm Daryl Hamilton, manager of transmission and substation projects. I work for Gabor Axe in the engineering and projects group. This morning, we're going to do a presentation of the Fulton Cut project as an update to the council. We also have a video to share at the end that we'll like to pivot to before any questions. So, before we get into the details of the actual project itself, what I'd like to do is go over some historical fast snapshots of the Fulton Cut. There may be some folks that may not be familiar with the Fulton Cut. The Fulton Cut is located there at Blount Island on the North Bank and Reed Island on the South Bank. And it's essentially a river crossing of six transmission lines, five 230 kV lines and one 138 kV lines. They're critical to our system. Some facts about the Fulton Cut. The original tower was constructed and built in the early 60s. Later, in the late 60s, the second tower was constructed, followed by the third tower in the 80s. The existing tower height is roughly 315 feet. And across the river, it's approximately, the river crossing is approximately 2,000 feet across. I'm going to mention some terms in this presentation that I'd like to clarify up front. You'll hear me say paramet structures, monopole structures, and conductors. Conductors is the actual wire that the current flows on. The paramet structures are the actual structures at the bank of the river. There's three paramet towers on the north bank and three on the south bank. They're the towers that really hose all of them, can handle all of the moments and forces and loading of the conductor crossing the river. And we have monopole structures. The monopole structures are the back-end structures that get us into alignment of the existing alignment of the Fulton Cut. And as you see on the picture, the green lines is the project is being constructed to the west of the existing lines. And we are roughly, per the table, we're roughly in this project replacing roughly four miles of wire in addition to installing those structures. So we hit some, recently we hit some major milestones for the project. We completed the paramet construction, the paramet towers construction. And we recently pulled roping and conductor across the St. Johns River via helicopters. That was a significant milestone into the project. In addition to that, we started on the middle tower, and then we proceeded over the weekend with the helicopter to the westmost tower, and we'll proceed to the east. That'll be the last tower that we do. All of those activities we call in the project make ready work, because the next significant milestone that we need to do is tie in the existing circuit from the old towers and convert those over to the new towers. That will be a significant milestone for the project. That work, well, let me back up, the existing work of pulling the conductor across the river, all of that will be completed mid-September, late-September. From mid-September, mid to late-September to December, calendar year 2026, we'll complete all of the remaining, tying those in into the old towers and to the new towers. So what we'll do in that part, since there are six circuits, there's two circuits per tower under a planned outage. And I wanted, before we go any further, JEA's transmission system is what we call a looped system. Our customers are fed from the distribution system, so there's a transmission system and a distribution system. So as we take outages to construct the Fulton Cut or any other transmission project, that does not affect the customers. So sometimes when you hear outages, you think, you know, the customer would be affected. But in this case, it's a transmission outage. And we'll take six outages, one at a time. And what we'll do, we will convert over from the existing towers to the new towers. And then at the same time, we'll have the helicopter there to demo out the existing conductors off the existing towers. And we'll do that six times, and we will do those activities up until roughly Christmastime. So by December 2026, the Fulton Cut, from an operational perspective, would be complete. The lines would be two, which is the scope of the project, is to raise the power lines 225 feet above high tide. The current permit for the Fulton Cut is at 175 feet. So essentially, we are raising the power lines roughly 50 feet. That way, Jaxport can bring in larger ships due to their previous work of dredging the river. So, in effect, what that does to the existing site there for the area around the neighborhoods, it roughly raises the profiles of the towers 50 feet, because existing towers are roughly, on average, 315 feet. And the new is around 365 on average. So with that being the case, this project, from a funding perspective, we worked and we developed a tri-party agreement. The parties were the city of Jacksonville, Jaxport, and JEA. The initial $45 million from this project was funded with state grants in Jaxport. We are now in phase two at the end of the table that you'll see there is at the end of quarter three, fiscal year 26. And the overall project budget for this project is $117 million. We are roughly 63% spend within that $117 million. In addition, this project is executed from a project execution called Progressive Design Build. And what that is, is it's a design build, but since we're part of a municipal, we call it a Progressive Design Build. So what we do is we have a guaranteed maximum price, which was $89.5 million, and Quanta Services was the winning bidder of that. We are at 60% spend within that 89, the GMP, to $89.5 million. At the end of this month, we'll be going into the phase three of the tri-party agreement. Jaxport would be start reimbursing JEA for the remaining $39.5 million. So the next slide, it shows the helicopter, which is a support needed to execute this project due to the height of the structures and for demolition purposes. So the first two rows are, we are actively executing that as we speak. Again, the helicopter allowed us to pull the roping and conductor across the river on the first tower. Last weekend, we were able to complete the roping pole across the St. Johns River for the second tower. And we're also installing marker balls. So the helicopter is providing that support services there as well per the permits. Remaining helicopter work would be as we take those six outages to connect and interconnect from the old towers to the new towers, we will utilize the helicopter to demo out the existing cables for the existing towers. And with that being said, so at the end of basically the calendar year of 2026, we'll be fully operational, but the project will still be open because we have to demo out the existing towers. That occurs spring between any time from January to March-April time frame. And we'll cut up the towers and sections, and the helicopter will allow us to utilize, execute the project from there. So close coordination with the Coast Guard, Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, and JFRD to establish a safe zone within the river as we have those helicopter support services. With that being said, that's the project in general. We do have a slide, a video that we'd like to show you. It kind of shows the current progress of the project. And if you don't mind, we can take questions or any comments after the video. It takes coordination to move power lines across the St. Johns River. And for JEA, this milestone took to the skies. As a part of the $117 million Fulton Cut project, Helicopter recently helped string a new optical ground wire between Blunt Island and Reed Island, the first river crossing of the project. We'll put it in blocks at the tops of the towers, which essentially are pulleys. We'll string it across to other blocks, and then we'll tie it back to the south bank on Reed Island. The OPGW, or optical ground wire, is more than a protective wire. It contains fiber optic communications technology, giving JEA a communications connection across the river, where there was none in the past. It also features a carbon fiber core instead of the traditional steel core. That means less sag. Less sag means JEA can reduce the overall height of the towers. Of reducing the height of the towers, even though the conductor was more expensive, we saw an overall net savings of $5 to $6 million on this project. Getting it across the river was a team effort. JEA, the U.S. Coast Guard, JSO, Pickett, and Irby Construction all worked together to coordinate the helicopter operation and manage boat traffic. Once complete, the Fulton Cut project will create a higher clearance so larger cargo ships can enter Jaxport. It is a project designed to support Jacksonville's continued growth and our area's overall economy. But for JEA, a measure of success begins with getting the job done right. We're on budget. We're on schedule. Projects, we have no safety incidents, and that's the main thing. But this is probably one of the most major milestones. One major milestone complete and one step closer to raising the lines. And Jacksonville's capacity to move what's next. JEA, building community. We still have a lot of work to do. We have some significant milestones. Again, the most significant milestone as we connect from the old tower to the new paramet structures. But one thing to date is we are on budget, are on schedule, and there's zero safety incidents. So the project is going well. We're just praying for good weather. Thank you, Mr. Hamilton. We have Mr. Peluso in the queue. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the presentation. It's a pretty simple question. I don't know if it's for you to answer or somebody else in the group. I just want to make sure, is Jaxport kicking in for any of this, or is it just City of Jax and JEA for the price of the power lines going up? Yes, it's a tri-party agreement. Jaxport is kicking in. The initial $45 million phase one budget was from state grants and Jaxport. In phase three, the remaining $39.5 million is coming from Jaxport as well. JEA's portion is $32.5 million, and that comprises the entire $117 million budget. Thank you very much. I'm Tyrone Clark-Murray, followed by Council Member Pittman. Thank you, Chair. Good morning. Thank you so much for this presentation. I'm going to start with the part that was most astounding to me, is the worker who was in the harness on the helicopter. Boy, that's a brave soul. Did he volunteer for that, or did you all pick names? Because, wow, I mean, my heart was beating just watching him, so I could just imagine how he felt sitting there in that harness and just moving with the helicopter. You know, it was amazing to see. It was one of the subcontractors from Irby. The company's name is Gulf Services, and in the industry, they're known for helicopter services. But just to your point, the sightseeing that, because the helicopter speed was, you know, if I was to gauge it, it was 30 to 40 miles per hour going from the north bank to the south bank. So it was quite amazing. I don't have the nerves to do it. Neither do I. I had very, just watching it was like, wow. So just a couple of questions, because I was on council when that initial appropriation, and there was a Jaxport, JEA, and there's one other entity that was involved in SARS funding. So I remember reading the project, and I know there has been some cost increase. So I am, like, in full support of this, and I'm just amazed, and I'm just so anticipating seeing the result, because it's just, it's amazing what we can do. And I'm sure if there was a Jaxport representative here, they would talk about, like, what it's going to mean in terms of the financial return for the city in terms of jobs, too. Just a couple of quick questions, just based on what you told us today. Okay, so just, you said that the existing towers, you're going to cut them, if I heard you, understood you correctly. And so are they going to be reused, are they going to be recycled? How does that, what happens with that material? Yes, ma'am, good question. The towers, they will be cut in sections and moved to a safe zone, and part of the scope of the contractor, they're going to be recycled. The contractor has the scope of that. Okay, sounds really good. Thank you for that. And then just one last one. So how long does it take for the helicopter to pull the, you used the term rope, so I'm going to say rope, too, the roping. How long does that take? You know, once everything was set up, it went fairly quick. You know, each structure, there's two circuits on there, and each circuit, there's four poles. And from that morning, I would say on the initial morning, each pole, each circuit was roughly an hour, and, you know, from the north bank to the south bank. And the reason why we initially pull the roping is because the actual wire, the conductor, is really rigid and stiff. And so we have a means and method for construction is you actually pull a lighter rope, and then you'll go back and pull a heavier duty rope. And then from that, we'll put it on a mechanical system to actually pull on pulleys to pull the conductor across the river. So we are gaining efficiencies because the first tower, after the roping system was set up, it took us roughly a week to actually pull the actual electrical wire. But like I said, this weekend, we're looking to pull each circuit a week, so two weeks is what we scoped out in our schedule. But with this week, we're actually, we gained some efficiency, so we actually will be done in five days for pulling the conductor, which is good. We're gaining some speed there. Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you, Chair. Ms. Spittman. The Chair, first of all, I got to say, I was holding my breath the whole while he was going across. I said, you have to be especially talented. But thank you for being here this morning and sharing the coordination. My question would be, once the project is done, what type of maintenance would have to be done and also the lifeline of this particular project? Because I think you said the last time this was done is in the 1960s, 1963-ish. So tell me, is it supposed to last longer than the first time, and what type of maintenance issues will incur over the lifetime? Yes, ma'am. Good question. So, JEA, internal to JEA, we have operation and maintenance department, particularly we have a transmission maintenance department. So they do yearly inspections on all of JEA's transmission structures, looking for loose connections, rusting, or anything. I mean, that they do a quite in-depth inspection. So typically, from those inspections, if there were tasks needed to do, they would complete those tasks on our operation and maintenance side. To the question as far as the lifespan is, you know, from a typical installation, you could see anywhere from, you know, 50 to 75 years. I don't have the exact number, but it's an asset that's a long-term assets. And generally, the asset that we have there, the three, the, now we're putting pyramids, towers in. The original towers were what we call lattice structures. And the big difference between those two is the lattice structures have more members, more cross-members to maintain the loading. And the pyramids towers, with technology, is less members, so it's easier to construct, but it's also more economical to maintain, to provide the maintenance, because there's just less material, less connection. And even if this project wasn't executed from raising the power lines, the existing towers still have plenty of life on them, from my understanding. And is this the only, I should say the state of Florida or Jacksonville, are there other states around the country that's raising their power lines as well? Yes, ma'am. And they're utilizing a similar process as JA used. They're utilizing the paramax structures to do that. Generally, you see it on river crossings or creek crossings. We do have another project in the planning phase where it's a significant crossing as well. And we would need to utilize a similar structure just due to the length of the crossing. So this is good experience for JA, really, because it gives us different avenues for construction and different ways to execute it. And so in my 26 years here at JA, this is the first time and largest project that we executed on the transmission side. And it was the first project where we utilized helicopters. Okay. I'm looking forward to here. I don't know if I'll be, I won't be here doing, I guess, whenever the maintenance get ready to be done in the next 75 years. But thank you. It sounds very innovating, and I'm looking forward to us bringing some economic development in terms of bringing more ships in as well because of it. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, committee members. Thank you, Mr. Hamilton. I've got two quick follow-up questions. You said you hit a milestone. Does that put you ahead as far as the timeline of the project? Good question, sir. It does not. So with the schedule, we have, there was some, I won't say fluff, but you want to calculate and plan your risk with the schedule. So the initial, the risk with this milestone, with the river crossing, there was some time put in there to make sure that if there was some issues, which we did have some issues with some mechanical systems, but what it does is that with the issues that we had from the mechanical systems, the efficiency that we gained here recently over the last week, it puts us at the schedule that we planned for. So in addition to that, with the next critical milestone from converting the old system to the new system, we're working with our operations department, and with that coordination, we call them SOC, System Operations and Control Center. With that cooperation, those outages that we request, they have to coordinate with the state of Florida, the FRCC, to grant us those outages. So there's an approval process. So we're sticking to those dates of the SITs outages for the next critical milestone. So it doesn't, to answer your question, it puts us, the schedule doesn't shrink. It leaves us to a point where we're going to meet schedule. From user end, that was my second question about outages. How long will those last as you go through that transition period? Yes, sir. And that's another good question. And so for the transmission outages that we're requesting that's needed to execute the work, we're requesting originally two weeks with some float within that. But with our coordination with the contractor, we're thinking we can, you know, get it done within one week. So, but the schedule is built with risk in the schedule. So if those risks aren't executed, we will have some additional float in the schedule to have the outage decrease. All right. Thank you for your time. Very quickly, if you can introduce the rest of your team. Thank you for your presentation this morning. Thank you, sir. Thank you for your time. We have my boss, Gabor Atts. He's the director of projects. We have Rene. We have, let's say, and we have Bruno here. And also the project team, we have the project manager, Jason Reinhardt, and he works for me. And we also have two inspectors, Jay Hockett and Bo Medley. And the contractor itself is Quanta, but Irby is taking the lead. It is a Quanta company. So it's been a really good project to date. Thank you, Mr. Hamilton, for taking the time and coming and presenting to the TEU committee. And continue what you're doing and be safe. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. To the committee, I just want to make a quick comment. Last Friday, as the liaison to the JEA board, there was a special meeting to present the findings of a personal survey, the one that was commissioned by the city and the one that was conducted by a third party. And I would encourage each committee members to, if they don't have one, get a copy of the surveys of the CEO of Miss Vicki Cavey, and read it for yourself. The bottom line is that the allegations of toxic workplace racism, things of that nature, were unsubstantiated. And nevertheless, the JEA board is now moving in a direction of executive coaching for the entire C-suite, so that they can be improved communication between the seventh floor and the other workers. I think sometimes we see the utility, we know it's a public utility, but we often overlook the fact that it operates as a private entity, perhaps with the same level of expectations and cultures of private corporations. I'm pretty sure that if someone was to do a survey of Jamie Dimon, who leads one of the biggest banking institutes, there will be some complaints on him as well. Ms. Tyrone Clark-Murray, before we move on to the agenda. Thank you, Chair. To the Chair, the survey results are available, were they sent to us as council members? Are they just available online to the general public? How is that information being communicated? That is a very good question. I have Ms. Renee Hunter still here as far as accessibility of the survey. I think as elected officials, we're privileged to it, but I don't know as to access. Renee, if you would, please, for two seconds. Renee Gu, JEA. Through the Chair to Council Member Canemiro, could you please repeat the question? I'm sorry. That's okay. Ms. Clark-Murray. Thank you, Chair. Good morning, Renee. Good morning. So my question is how, Chair Amaro just talked about the results of the survey regarding JEA and the toxic culture. So he was saying that basically the allegations were unsubstantiated, and he encouraged us to read the results of the survey. But I was asking him where can we access the results. Is it made public? Was it sent to us via email? Well, as council members, how can we access the results? There's an eight-page summary that was given through the Chair to Council Member Clark-Murray. There's an eight-page summary. I'll be happy to send it to all the elected officials. Thank you for that. And thank you, Renee. I got my Renee's mixed up. That's that, Renee Hunter. Thank you again. Thank you for your presentations. I'm sorry. Ms. Pittman has. Thank you. I'm very excited to read the summary. I guess my concern, if it was unsubstantiated, they're also doing training as well, or is training a part of the survey that was done? Through the Chair to Council Member Pittman, the senior leadership team will be, from my understanding, and I can get you more information, having coaching sessions for all of the senior leadership team. I believe that they have a 30-day, and Kawanza, who is on our board, she is the HR director for ViceStar. She is the one who's been charged with finding a coach to help with the senior leadership team. Okay. Yeah, I'm very excited to read the summary. Thank you. Okay. Thank you again. Thank you. Appreciate your time. We'll turn to our agenda, page two. First item is 2026-0569. Can I get a motion? We've got some Scriveners and waivers. If I can get General Counsel or Council Auditor to explain, please. Through the Chair of the Committee, the Scriveners are technical in nature, just correcting the year that is being referenced in the Bill 2027. Thank you. Let's open the ballot. Six yays, zero nays. Item number two, 2026-0570 has been deferred at the request of Council Member Boylan. Item number three, 2026-0573. Any discussion? Let's open the ballot. Six yays, zero nays. Item number four, 2026-0574. Second. Any discussion? Open the ballot, please. Six yays, zero nays. Item number five, 2026-0587. Can I get a motion on the amendment? Can you explain the amendment? Through the Chair to the Committee, the amendment attaches the referenced exhibit as well as the referenced real estate purchase agreement. This is a standard form approved agreement and does not contain any specifics regarding this acquisition. Can I get a motion on the bill as amended? I'm sorry. Let's vote on the amendment. All in favor? Any opposed? Amendment passes. Thank you. Can we open a ballot, please? Six yays, zero nays. And we're now on second reading legislation. 2026-0627. 2026-0629. 2026-0633. 2026-0634. This will have a one-cycle deferral. We're trying to get two JEA bills on the same cycle. And that's the reason. 2026-0635. 2026-0644. And now we come to our public hearing portion. We have two cards. Mr. Carnal Oliver. Yes. My name is Carnal Oliver. Address is on file. My comments is referring to item number four. My question is specifically through the chairman, Amaro, to the general council office, Ms. Carla Shield. I want you to identify to me with this bill and going forward to the council meeting on Tuesday night. Is there any kind of way that you can incorporate languages or enforcement of the 1866 Civil Rights Act? And I just don't want to stop there. I would be in support of making a guarantee for people who served our military because a lot of black Americans did serve the military. And I believe that they should get economic opportunities because of that. And moving forward, any kind of incentive, recapture, dealing with the tax revenues that the city gets from property taxes, I want to incorporate the same standard on language. I want to identify specifically what tools in the toolbox does the general council have to enforce that. And let's also take a good look straight to the chair. What can you do to identify from a reporting and enforcement system of how do you make sure black Americans make economic gains? Because my point is simply based off this. The Graham Library, the Mary Singleton, the voting from that election among black American communities was piss poor. And it's because this city has never acknowledged black American. And I want you to understand that. A lot of the blame falls on the legislative body. The executive branch can only do so much, but y'all have been unable to do your job. And it makes me question, do we need to have a convention of the charter? We may have to straighten y'all out. Thank you, Mr. Oliver. Our next speaker's card is Mr. John Nooney. Is he here? He may have left. Well, that concludes our meeting for today. Our next meeting will be on September 1. Can I have a motion for adjournment? This meeting is adjourned.