COMMENTARY

MARK SCHUMANN

Forward with the sale of Vero Electric

In electing Richard Winger and Amelia Graves, Vero Beach voters seemed to trust that both Winger and Graves will make every reasonable effort to conclude the sale of the city’s electric system under the terms of the signed contract between the city and Florida Power & Light.

Given that three duly elected members of the city council (Tracy Carroll, Craig Fletcher and Pilar Turner) entered into a binding contract with FPL, the new council has a legal obligation to honor that agreement.

However, as Winger made clear during the campaign, a deal is a deal.  If required changes to the contract increase the cost of concluding the sale, FPL needs to be prepared to bring more money to the table.  The taxpayers of Vero Beach should not be expected to incur costs above and beyond what voters approved in the March 12 referendum.

Over the next few months, it will become clear what the Florida Municipal Power Agency will need in order to let Vero Beach out of its contracts without putting the remaining member cities and bondholders at risk.

In much less than three months, it will likely also become clear that the FMPA board of directors cannot give Vero Beach a waiver to leave the All Requirements Project before October 1, 2016. For an early exit to be possible, each and every member city in the ARP must give its assent.  The chances of unanimous approval are slim to none.  Why?  Put simply, if everyone holds a veto, the only thing that cannot be vetoed is the status quo.

Having approved and signed a purchase and sale agreement with FPL, Vero Beach voters and the city council have done their part.  It is now the responsibility of FPL to work with the FMPA and the Florida Public Service Commission to secure approval of a deal on terms that will not increase the cost to taxpayers.

If these hurdles can be cleared, Winger and Graves owe it to the voters who elected them to approve amendments to the contract that will be needed to move the deal to a closing – even if that closing cannot take place until late 2016.

It is worth remembering that if it proves too costly for the FMPA to assume Vero Beach’s obligations, there is always the original proposal for the Orlando Utilities Commission to assume those power entitlements and then to re-sell them to FPL for three years.  As long as FPL is willing to accept that the FMPA would need Internal Revenue Service clearance for the deal, “Plan A” is always an option.

Full disclosure

The island tabloid this week reported that my wife, Cheri, contributed $500 to Amelia Graves’ campaign.  If reporter Lisa Zahner had known, she could also have revealed that my mother-in-law gave $200 to the Graves campaign and that my in-laws placed signs for Winger and Graves in their yard.

What Zahner also did not include in her report was an accounting of the many generous contributions Tracy Carroll received from Indian River Shores residents, including Town Councilman Tom Cadden.  Cadden and many other Vero Electric customers who live outside the City of Vero Beach care deeply about getting lower electric rates.  They have the luxury of advocating for the sale without considering the consequences to the residents and taxpayers of Vero Beach, such as higher taxes, additional fees and reduced services.

Nestled safely in an island enclave, their regard for Vero Beach may extend no further than to their favorite play grounds – The Riverside Theatre and the Vero Beach Museum of Art, each of which sits on a large parcel of land leased from the City of Vero Beach for just $1 a year.

Zahner was at it again this week, repeating her unfounded assertion that the city’s staff is “bloated.”  Zahner and her editors seem oblivious to the fact that the city has cut its staff by some 25 percent since 2007.  They also seem unwilling to accurately report on the significant progress made in recent union negotiations, such as increases in employee pension contributions, use-it-or-lose-it sick and vacation pay, overtime cutbacks, salaries frozen for five years now, restructuring of the health insurance plan and a planned conversion to a defined contribution pension plan for General Fund employees.  Ignoring all of this progress, Zahner suggested that “Keeping Our Vero Vero” means keeping, “the bloated city staff and municipal employee benefits taxpayers can no longer afford.”

What the people of Vero Beach can no longer afford is to take seriously Zahner’s reporting. She and her editors have it in for the City of Vero Beach.  Their editorial philosophy is simply that they want readers each week to say, “Wow, where did they get that story?”

By all reasonable measures, the city’s staff is no longer bloated, despite the bogus benchmarking statistics Pilar turner may continue to cite. (See related story) If anything is bloated, it is Zahner’s ego and her sense of self-importance.  The Brevard County resident’s hatchet job on Amelia Graves, published less than two weeks before the election, will go down as the low point in community journalism.

In the interest of full disclosure, perhaps the island weekly will publish an independently audited accounting of its contributors.   Some would be interested to know who is willing to fund the tabloid’s relentless attacks on the city.

I will give the island tabloid credit, though, for at least reporting a Tracy Carroll election night quote, a quote that only served to confirm Carroll’s lack of grace and civility.  “It was a toss-up between Dick Winger’s little acolyte (Amelia Graves) and me, and I lost,” Carroll was reported to have said.

Carroll was wrong on two counts.  Amelia Graves is no one’s “acolyte,” and the election was never a toss-up.  By a resounding margin, Vero Beach voters sent a clear message that they want their elected officials to treat each other and the public with respect.

Zahner accused me of attacking Carroll “day after day” on my “blog.”  Ironically, her publisher was on the staff of the Washington Post during the Watergate days.  He knows the difference between reporting and an attack.  While the Post was accused by Nixon supporters of “attacking” the president, the newspaper was simply reporting the truth.  Similarly, I do not consider it an “attack” to report and comment on the long list of ways Carroll managed to alienate so many former supporters, or to reveal the degree to which her candidacy was funded by FPL.

Finally, I find it humorous that Zahner and her editors continue to refer to Inside Vero as a blog, when, in truth, we publish a monthly news magazine with twice the circulation of their island tabloid, and more than twice the circulation of the Press Journal within the city limits.

By the numbers

Candidate	Votes	Percentage
Richard Winger	2044	67.8%
Amelia Graves	1631	54.0%
Tracy Carroll	961	31.8%
Brian Heady	747	24.7%
Joseph Guffanti	207	6.8%
Total Ballots Cast	3020
Total Votes Cast	5590

Because voters were able to vote for up two candidates in yesterday’s election, the percentage of the total votes received by any one candidate is not indicative of the percentage of voters who supported them.  For example, while Richard Winger received 36.5 percent of the votes cast, 68.5 percent of those voting cast one of their votes for Winger.