The names of 26 applicants vying to replace Ed Kelley on the CPS Energy board of trustees were released Wednesday.
Kelley, who represents Quadrant 1 of the CPS Energy service area, started his first five-year term on the utility’s five-member board in 2012 and will conclude a decade of service on Jan. 31, 2022. To be eligible, candidates must live in Quadrant 1, which encompasses northwest San Antonio.
Among the applicants are educators, a doctor, an engineer, several business owners, government employees, and independent contractors.
In an interview with the San Antonio Report on Tuesday, Kelley said he’d like to see a businessperson knowledgeable about running large businesses succeed him.
“At the end of the day, that’s what CPS [Energy] is,” Kelley said. “It’s got almost $12 billion of assets, it’s got 3,000 employees, it’s got annual revenue of almost $3 billion a year, it’s got 1.2 million customers that depend on it every day. So it is a big business. It’s a complicated business, and I think it needs to have a board member that is fitted to that type of challenge.”
Kelley said he feels the candidate pool is strong, and he looks forward to the upcoming vetting process. CPS Energy Vice Chair Janie Gonzales said she feels the opposite way; she would have “liked to [have seen] closer to 1,000 applications.” Kelley chairs the two-member committee that will select finalists for the position.
Getting a new board member approved by the CPS Energy board and City Council is likely to be tense, if recent history is any guide. Sources told the San Antonio Report earlier this week that Mayor Ron Nirenberg has been working behind the scenes to steer the appointment process at both CPS Energy and the San Antonio Water System, both of which are in the search process for a new trustee.
Nirenberg told the San Antonio Report in an emailed statement Tuesday that he feels “confident that [the current board members] will find a board member who will help move CPS Energy forward and prepare the organization to deal with a changing energy landscape.”
Here are the 26 people who applied for the CPS Energy board of trustees:
- Cynthia Wine — Self-employed bookeeper
- Johanna Trelles — Independent contractor
- Tony Katz — EY Assurance manager
- Mary Young — Retired; former University of Miami executive director of the graduate school of business
- Stanley Facey — Retired; former X-Technologies, PKI Future Strategic Policy SME
- Charles McClafferty — University of Texas at San Antonio graduate researcher
- Ellen Pfeiffer — Senior Care Coordinator for A Care Services
- Lt. Gen. Stephen Twitty — President and CEO of Twitty & Associates
- Vicki Adelstein — Director of Sales & Marketing for the commercial division of Old Republic Title
- Gustavo Vicentini Solon — Senior vice president of project development at America Energy
- Francine Romero — Associate professor and chair of the public administration department at the University of Texas at San Antonio
- Phillip Tappmeyer — Help desk support specialist at Health by Design
- John Kelly — Retired; former Texas Department of Transportation San Antonio District Engineer
- Clayton Killinger — Retired; former executive vice president and chief financial officer of CST Brands
- John Nicholas — Retired; former senior director of technology and operations at Rush Enterprises Inc.
- Adelita Cantu — Associate professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
- Claude Jack Cantrell — Independent consultant
- David Garza — Federal agent and CEO and senior consultant of Crystal Application Software Services
- Prasad Padmanabhan — Professor of finance at St. Mary’s University
- Dr. Armistead Wellford — Cardiologist at the Heart and Vascular Institute of Texas
- Sarmad Kahn — Director of strategic sourcing at NuStar Energy
- Martin Heimrich — Technical coordinator at VIA Metropolitan Transit
- A. David Marne — Founder and CEO of Half Priced Real Estate
- Noah Almanza — Director of strategic partnerships at Laso Health
- Kenneth Wilson — Consultant and former CEO and president of Haven for Hope
- Denise Hernandez — Vice president of development at True Flavors
As of Wednesday, the City of San Antonio, which oversees the selection of a new SAWS board trustee, had not provided a list of applicants for the open seat on that board.
Disclosure: CPS Energy is a financial supporter of the San Antonio Report.
