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Charlotte Amalie
Thursday, March 28, 2024
HomeNewsArchivesMapp Re-Organizes PFA, WICO and viNGN Boards

Mapp Re-Organizes PFA, WICO and viNGN Boards

Re-organizing the members of the Public Finance Authority, West Indian Co. Ltd., and V.I. Next Generation Network boards was the first order of business Wednesday for new PFA board chairman Gov. Kenneth Mapp.

By law, the territory’s Finance commissioner and Office of Management and Budget director join the governor on the PFA board. Present for Wednesday’s meeting on St. Thomas was OMB director-nominee Nellon Bowry and Finance Commissioner-designee Valdamier Collens, who also was tapped by Mapp to be the PFA’s executive director.

PFA board member Keith O’Neale Jr. was elected secretary of the PFA board. Mapp, Bowry and Collens will also be signatories on the PFA’s bank accounts, while O’Neale will only continue on as a signatory until the PFA names a director of finance and administration, Mapp said. Collens, as PFA executive director, will be the only one with access to a PFA credit card, which authority staff said had previously been standard practice.

The board also voted to replace O’Neale on the viNGN board with Jose’ Luis Garcia Serrano, while V.I. Water and Power Authority Executive Director Hugo Hodge Jr. will be replaced by WAPA board member Elizabeth Armstrong.

Seven new members of the WICO board were nominated and confirmed Wednesday. All will start as soon as the terms of the current members are complete, according to Mapp. They were : Randolph Knight, Joyce Dore-Griffin, Roberto Cintron, Ricaldo Lettsome, Michael Watson, Michael Daswani, and Edward Thomas.

Tourism Commissioner Beverly Nicholson-Doty is the only existing member that will keep her seat, and Mapp explained Wednesday that both she and Cintron will also be the government’s representatives on the V.I. Port Authority board.

“Serving dual roles on VIPA and the WICO boards will allow them to have the same view about what’s going on and that way, they can absolve and resolve the conflicts and the competition between the two entities,” the governor said.

In other news, the board authorized its executive director to begin negotiations with 3P Inc. and Omni Systems for $207,000 and $123,000, respectively. Both companies have continued to provide the PFA with software and hardware support.

Mapp also laid out plans to set up an Agriculture Revolving Fund. The fund would help create a co-op for farmers that could be tapped to provide food for the territory’s public schools.

“There are tremendous amounts of processed foods being used in school lunch and we’re importing everything,” Mapp explained after the meeting. “But giving our schools access to fresh fruits and veggies will help change the menu and in order to do that, we have to get agriculture growing on a wider basis in the territory. We have to work with the farmers, co-op them, plant the crops, get the quantities we need and drive them into the schools.”

Mapp said the proposal for setting up the fund and how it would be paid into is still in the works.

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