Meeting on St. Thomas Thursday, the V.I. Water and Power Authority's governing board said it has received requested resignations from several top managers of the public utility as a six-month-long review of each of the employees continues.
Secretary Andrew Rutnik said the board received the resignations of WAPA Assistant Executive Director Glenn Rothgeb, Director of Engineering John Christian, Internal Auditor Leslie Smith, Director of Human Resources Glen Byron, General Counsel Cathy Smith and Public Information Officer Patricia Blake Simmonds.
Many of the resignations were submitted by attorneys retained by the various managers to represent them during the performance review.
The board delayed discussion of the resignations until a closed-door executive session which followed the regular agenda.
In other actions, the board approved the authority's Fiscal Year 2001 budgets for electrical and water services and a budget for electrical capital projects. The electrical operating budget came in at $111.1 million; the potable water operating budget totaled $28.8 million while the electrical capital budget was pegged at $39 million.
During the financial report, the board was told by Comptroller Maurice Sebastien that the authority's external auditors planned to issue a qualified audit because of continuing high government receivables. Recent payments by the government were considered unusual occurrences and did not indicate an improvement in payment patterns.
Projects approved by the WAPA board included a boiler feed replacement for $92,500 from Camfer engineering, the purchase of an intake structure circulating water pump, asbestos abatement and insulation for generating Unit 11, and the purchase of superheater boiler tubes for one of the older generators, Unit 13.
The status report on the new 25,000-megawatt unit for the St. Thomas power plant indicated the draft permit will be advertised in print media next week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, beginning a 30-day technical public comment period on the permit.
Several board members expressed dismay when WAPA personnel revealed the authority was paying about $19,000 a month to store the new unit pending approval of the EPA permit. WAPA Executive Director Raymond George explained that had the unit not been purchased well in advance of the permits being received, the authority would have faced a two-year wait for the unit to be constructed because manufacturer Pratt and Whitney has numerous back-orders.
Once the new unit is online, Unit 13 is expected to be taken down for a complete overhaul.