MARK SCHUMANN
Frustrated with the slow pace and high cost of negotiations to sell Vero Electric, City Councilman Richard Winger plans to propose hiring a second outside law firm to critique the work of the transactional attorneys and to give the Council a “second opinion.”
Winger has been critical of transactional attorney John Igoe and the law firm of Edwards Wildman for proposing a number of failed strategies for resolving the city’s contractual obligations to the Florida Municipal Power Agency. To date, Igoe’s firm has billed more than $1.2 million for handling the power sale.
Winger also wants a second opinion on the negotiating positions taken by the FMPA. “Should a restructuring (of the power transfer agreements) not be possible, the City needs to know if FMPA is acting arbitrarily, outside the provisions of the FMPA contracts, or rather that the City has been badly advised,” Winger wrote.
Igoe’s firm also missed a critical date for giving the FMPA notice that the city planned to withdraw from the FMPA’s All Requirements Project, an oversight that could delay the sale by at least a year. With the rate differential between Vero Electric and Florida Power & Light estimated at no less than $20 million, the failure to give a timely ARP withdrawal notice could cost a lot more than time.
Winger wrote a memo explaining his proposed agenda item for next Tuesday’s Council meeting , which is included in the backup materials posted on the city’s website. Referring to the power transfer agreements between the city, the Orlando Utilities Commission and Florida Power & Light, Winger wrote, “We were repeatedly advised Plan A was legally sound, even though FMPA has insisted for well over a year that that is not the case.”
Winger pointed out that in early May, Igoe assured the Council that June 30 would be a reasonable deadline for reaching agreement on the basic structure of a power transfer agreement that could be approved by the FMPA, its bond counsel, bond trustees and the Internal Revenue Service.
According to Winger, the parties to the deal are nowhere near reaching agreement on a way for the Orlando Utilities Commission to assume Vero Beach’s commitments to the FMPA and to then sell that power to FPL for three years. “We are now faced with finding a so called Plan B; that will involve significantly more than just some tweaking, if in fact a Plan B can be found that will be acceptable to the FMPA,” Winger wrote.
“We need a fresh legal mind, a second opinion on if and how we can proceed,” Winger said. “The ratepayers and taxpayers of this city deserve such action. We need a fresh, unbiased mind, that does not need to justify past actions, to guide us in evaluating our current situation,” he added.
Indian River Guardian 
It will be interesting to see if Winger will get three votes to go forward with hiring an attorney firm for a second opinion.
I’ll second that, Bea.
The real problem was hiring a firm that wasn’t up to snuff in the first place, as they should have known. Getting another legal firm to actually criticize a fellow firm would be a long shot, unfortunately. Doesn’t happen. What they need is a professional firm to evaluate the actual deal and not give them answers the council says it wants. They have “yes” men right now, ignoring the problems, pretending what the troika wanted was feasible. That cost millions already. sigh.
We told them what the problems were, and they said we were full of it. just tragic they couldn’t see the truth, that the problems had to be addressed BEFORE we spent all the money.
As Lynne so clearly states, the Council and the lawyers were informed of these potential problems early on and chose to ignore them. They not only ignored these facts, they denigrated those who provided them with the information.
Do we have reasonable grounds to charge either or both the transactional attorneys and the troika with criminal negligence or at the very least malfeasance and violation of their fiduciary duties? If so, how do we as residents of Vero Beach go about investigating those options.
It’s about time that those on the council who did so much harm to our beautiful city and cost our city so much unnecessary expense took responsibility for their financially unsound actions that were totally predicated on their political ideology and their apparent desire to destroy the city.
a letter to Tallahassee might do the trick.
Maybe the first thing that needs to be done is fire the City Manager.. He only listens to three of the five elected officials and clearly he has not got the City of Vero Beach in the best interests of its citizens. In fact, he does not even understand what Winger means when Winger says, let’s keep Vero Vero.
I realize people think that a city manager works for the people, but in reality he or she works for his board of directors who hired, and can fire, him. that’s the deal with our system. 3 votes runs the city. if the city mgr doesn’t do what they say, they’ll find someone who will. it’s all about voting in people with integrity.