The San Diego Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) has named nine-year MTS employee Lawrence Marinesi chief financial officer to succeed Clifford Telfer, who will retire today after 37 years of service.<br /><br />Marinesi began his MTS career in 2004 as a budget manager before being promoted to director of financial planning and analysis in 2010. As CFO, Marinesi will be responsible for all MTS financial activities and budgeting, management of all fare collection systems, capital accounting activities, and a total budget of more than $248 million, said MTS officials in a press release.<br /><br />He also will direct two large projects to leverage technology to improve business processes. The first, an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) initiative, is a management tool that will integrate all financial, procurement and maintenance activities into one database and improve workflow management. The second, a Transit Asset Management (TAM) project/federal initiative, will enable MTS to collect asset data through a software application to evaluate the current condition of all transit assets and infrastructure, and identify the most cost-effective ways of managing and maintaining them to ensure system-wide safety, agency officials said.<br /><br />Telfer joined MTS as a grant analyst in 1976. He has been CFO since 2008.