At least two seats on the JEA board of directors will need to be filled in the coming months.
JEA board Chairman Alan Howard said Tuesday after a board meeting that he will not seek reappointment when his term ends Feb. 28.
“This is a job that requires a great deal of time and attention to do it right and I’ve tried to do that for the last year-plus,” Howard said after the board’s monthly meeting.
“It’s really time for someone else to have their term at the helm,” he said. He served on the board since 2016 and as chair since May 2017.
Howard indicated that while he plans to step down as chair at the end of his term, he could remain on the board while Mayor Lenny Curry’s office fills his seat and up to two others.
At the meeting, Howard announced that board member Husein Cumber resigned, citing a potential conflict of interest with the City Council election of his wife, LeAnna Cumber.
Cumber did not attend the Tuesday board meeting.
Curry also may need to fill the seat held by Rev. Frederick Newbill, whose term also ends Feb. 28.
Newbill said Tuesday he has not decided whether he wanted to continue serving. “I honestly don’t know right now,” he said.
Newbill said he has not had any recent conversations about the appointment with the mayor.
Curry appoints JEA board members and the City Council approves them. The process can take up to two months.
The seven-member board provides oversight for the country’s eighth-largest municipally owned electric, water and wastewater utility company. It hires, fires and provides guidance for JEA’s executive leadership team.
Howard is a founder and shareholder of the Milam Howard Nicandri Gillam & Renner law firm in Downtown Jacksonville. He focuses on mergers and acquisitions, corporate and project finance and securities matters.
JEA faced several challenges under Howard’s leadership.
The utility worked through two hurricanes, the resignation of former CEO Paul McElroy, a debate about the pros and cons of potentially selling JEA to a private operator, and the national search and eventual selection of Aaron Zahn to become the utility’s next chief executive.
Howard said Tuesday he wasn’t prepared to reflect on his time at JEA, saying that those conversations would need to wait until his term expired.
Cumber's resignation comes after LeAnna Cumber won a race to serve the District 5 council seat after no other candidates qualified to run for that position in the March 19 unitary election.
Her term begins July 1.
Former Mayor Alvin Brown appointed Husein Cumber to the JEA board in February 2014. Curry appointed him to another term in February that was set to expire in 2022.
In a letter sent Tuesday to Curry, Howard, council President Aaron Bowman, General Counsel Jason Gabriel and Curry’s Chief of Staff Brian Hughes, Cumber said that his wife’s election “may cause some perceived and/ or unintended conflicts.”
“Therefore, in an abundance of caution, and to allow LeAnna to fulfill her obligations to District 5’s constituents without constraints, I am resigning from the JEA Board of Directors Immediately.”
“I applaud Mr. Cumber,” Howard said after the meeting.
“I think it was an act of high integrity to anticipate and really cut off any potential allegations, conflict interest or undue influence,” he said.
Cumber served as a member of the board’s Finance & Audit Committee, Government, Legal and Real Estate Affairs Committee, and the Compensation Committee.
Hughes said Tuesday that Curry will evaluate potential candidates as he does whenever there are vacancies on the board.
As for the rest of the board, Kelly Flanagan and Camille Lee-Johnson’s terms runs through February 2020.
April Green is on the board until February 2021 and John Campion will serve through 2022.
