The head of the Manufacturers Association of the Southern Tier has requested the next Jamestown Board of Public Utilities member be a manufacturer.

On Monday, Todd Tranum, Manufactures Association of the Southern Tier executive director, spoke to the Jamestown City Council about the appointment of BPU board members during the public hearing on the city’s budget.

Tranum asked city officials if the Manufactures Association of the Southern Tier could be part of the process in selecting the new BPU board member and for it to be a business leader in the community.

“Five of the top ten customers of the BPU are private for-profit manufacturers, yet, the last we looked there is not a manufacturer on the board that is a BPU customer,” Tranum said. “Again, we ask that you work with us to identify local manufacturers to sit on the BPU.”

At the start of 2018, five out of the nine seats on the BPU will be up for appointment. The board is comprised of four city officials and five citizen members. The city officials serve by virtue of their office, which includes Jamestown Mayor Sam Teresi, who is also the president of the board; Jeff Lehman, city Public Works director; and two city council representatives, who are currently Greg Rabb and Maria Jones.

Because Rabb was not re-elected to the council in November, at least one other member of the council will have to be appointed to the BPU. Of the two newly elected members of the council, Andrew Liuzzo, At-Large, has been a Jamestown Community College teacher, former owner of Yankee Painter and Wallpapering Inc. and for the last 17 years has been a director of rehabilitation services for health groups in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Vanessa Weinert, At-Large, is the marketing and analytics director at the Chautauqua Institution.

Of the six remaining members of the council, two, Anthony Dolce and Tom Nelson, are teachers; Marie Carrubba is an attorney who is the executive director for the Southwestern Independent Living Center; Kim Ecklund is the senior data management and costing analyst for Bush Industries; Victoria James is a retired youth services director for the city; and Brent Sheldon is a public health sanitarian for Chautauqua County. Maria Jones, who will need to be reappointed to the BPU at the beginning of 2018, is the machining team manager at Cummins.

The five BPU community members are each appointed by the mayor for terms of varying lengths. Three of those board members’ terms will be expiring at the end of the year and will need to be reappointed to continue serving on the board. Those members include Chuck Cornell, who is the BPU chairman, the director of the Fredonia Technology Incubator of the State University of New York at Fredonia; Ralph Wallace, who is employed as production manager of Coronado Stone Products; and Martha Zenns, who is a JCC professor.

The two other community members of the board are Tyler Case, The Resource Center human resources administrator, and Terrance Horner, retired biomedical technician at UPMC Chautauqua WCA Hospital. Case and Horner were both appointed in January 2016 and their terms will expire at the end of 2019.

This is not the first time Tranum has voiced his concern publicly about who serves on the BPU board. Following Teresi’s decision to not reappoint three members — John Zabrodsky, former board chairman, Carl Pillitteri and Wayne Rishell — to the BPU in 2016, Tranum accused the mayor of wanting to dissolve the BPU into the city’s government. Zabrodsky is the owner of Advanced Manufacturing Technology; Pillitteri is Jamestown Public Schools buildings and grounds director; and Rishell is the chief financial officer for Weber Knapp.

“There has been a concerted effort by Mayor Teresi to remove those consumer voices from the board and replace them with people he feels he can control,” Tranum said in 2016.

It is expected the announcement of appointments and reappointments to the BPU will be made during council’s reorganization meeting, which is usually held at the start of the year. Teresi will recommend the appointments and reappointments, which will require the council’s approval.