Matt Helms

Detroit Free Press

The board of the Detroit Public Lighting Authority, the agency responsible for rapid fixes to the city’s streetlights, said Wednesday night that it had accepted the resignation of Odis Jones, the authority's CEO who only months ago was praised and given a bonus for outstanding performance.

The board met in session closed to the public tonight to discuss Jones' departure, which came after what several people familiar with the matter told the Free Press was a heated disagreement between Jones and Mayor Mike Duggan at city hall. The sources – who spoke on condition of anonymity because the departure hadn’t been announced publicly – said they were told about it in recent days but weren’t given a reason. Three people said Jones and Duggan had a major disagreement and argument recently, but it wasn’t clear what it was about.

The departure comes only three months after the lighting authority’s board of directors extended indefinitely its contract with Jones, 44, and awarded him a $20,000 bonus. Jones’ contract had been set to expire in 2017.

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“In two years, Odis has brought order out of chaos with the city’s street lights and has created an effective solution to an issue that has plagued the city for decades,” the board’s chairwoman, Dr. Lorna Thomas, said in a statement Nov. 5. “As a board, we are proud of Mr. Jones' tremendous accomplishments and are excited about the authority's future under his direction.”

Jones couldn’t be reached immediately for comment today. He did not attend the board meeting. His lawyer, Peter Kelley, was in the closed session but declined comment afterward.

Thomas denied after the meeting that the resignation was forced, saying Jones was ready to move on to new challenges.

Other board members declined comment, deferring to a statement released after the board unanimously accepted Jones' resignation.

Jones said in the statement that he returned to his hometown to take the CEO job "because I wanted to make a contribution to Detroit's rebirth."

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"At that time, more than 40% of the city's lights were inoperable and repairs to broken lights could take months or even years," Jones said. "In the intervening 2 1/2 years, we have installed more than 60,000 new, brighter, more energy efficient LED lights throughout our neighborhoods and main thoroughfares and are on a clear path of completion to finish relighting the downtown area by June of this year."

He said the streetlight repair project is 98% complete, and "I have decided it is time to pursue other opportunities that have come up."

Duggan’s office released its comments through the lighting authority's statement, saying, "He has served Detroit well and we wish him well as he moves to other challenges."

Jones became the public face of the city’s effort to relight streets across Detroit after the system deteriorated so badly that vast areas were without streetlights at night as the city careened toward bankruptcy. A Detroit native and graduate of Osborn High School who had been Cincinnati’s economic development director, Jones was named the lighting authority’s executive director in 2013.

Last year, Jones starred in a commercial aired on national television networks, including CNN, by Citicorp, the New York bank that underwrote two bond issues that are part of Detroit’s three-year, $185-million streetlight modernization effort that began in 2014.

The state approved the Public Lighting Authority of Detroit in 2012, creating an agency independent of the city with the ability to sell bonds for streetlight upgrades. The bonds are repaid with $12.5 million annually from Detroit’s utility tax.

After an initial rough start with a slow pace of repairs, then-emergency manager Kevyn Orr, Duggan and the City Council overhauled the effort and appointed new members to the five-person board. The council appoints two members on its own, the mayor another two, and the fifth is chosen by council from a list of candidates provided by the mayor.

The authority’s said today it has installed more than 60,000 streetlights the program was significantly ahead of schedule. The agency said it expects to finish relighting eight major thoroughfares by year-end.

Contact Matt Helms: 313-222-1450 or mhelms@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @matthelms.