GUEST COMMENTARY
LYNNE LARKIN
Retro-regretting versus Current-concepts. Regretting that you set the house on fire and forgetting to install smoke detectors, that won’t bring back the house. It might help you in your current house, however, to smoke outside and buy some darn batteries.
The city leaders may have spent millions on wasted attorney fees, employee and staff time, and lowered morale across the city, but maybe that will make them stop smoking whatever they’ve been smoking. Whatever made Fletcher and Turner believe that you can exist on eight to ten million less per year and “Keep Vero Vero,” it’s no longer credible.
Florida Power and Light has now heard from the Florida Municipal Power Agency about what they will need to break all the contracts Vero Beach has signed in order to become part of FMPA. From the rather sour looks on Amy Brunjes’ face, we’re fairly certain that the phrase “an amount higher than we expected” means what many predicted four years ago, i.e. it’s an amount they won’t want to pay. Millions of dollars and four years of guessing later, we are where we said we’d be. Stuck on the numbers. The Troika on City Council was told over and over to get the FMPA taken first on their agenda. Warren Winchester and many others can’t help but say “I TOLD YOU SO!” Forgive them, it’s frustration at its worst.
Regret, however, is the only thing we have for the deaf ears of Turner, Fletcher and Carroll [along with Feherty and Friends], and that is a useless occupation unless it helps you learn from your mistakes.
Can we do it, will we be able to start working from reality.
While trying to sift, or wade, through all the “information” being disseminated about the Vero Beach Electric Utility, there are a great many statements heard about “what should have happened” 10, 20 or 30 years ago.
Most of these statements leave out what was important at that particular time, such as getting power to the county areas that no other utility would serve, or betting on coal and oil when the government at the time was gung-ho on “cheap” or “clean” coal.
Times change. Focus changes. Other than making our current leaders more cautious about hiring law firms that are being recommended by your adversary in a sale, or making elected officials strive to examine the facts and outcomes before spending millions on what could be a dead-end road, the blame game is of no use.
If Heran and Feherty were so very wrong about our easy ability to exit these contracts, if they were so far off on the amount of money we’d receive when all amounts are tallied, if they were so misguided on insisting that no other buyers make bids on our system, maybe we shouldn’t be listening to them any more. We can learn from past mistakes.
Reality, fact-based decision making, is still an option. There are other means to reach lower rates, or better options for helping the county residents either move to other service providers or participate [as they have been] in setting rates. As we mentioned before [another way of saying “I told you so!”], options exist and people who run a city should examine them, as well as the history of why the rates go up and down, in order that the house not burn down again.
Stop pretending FPL is your big buddy. Stop pretending that FMPA will put itself in jeopardy to get you out of a bad deal. Time in this New Year to get real, as they say. The money isn’t there, the price is too high . . . ahem, it’s hard not to say it. Told ya. Now back to work in the present, current focus, cut your losses, no more smoke and mirrors.
Indian River Guardian 
“If Heran and Feherty were so very wrong about our easy ability to exit these contracts, if they were so far off on the amount of money we’d receive when all amounts are tallied,..”
Please, please add Charlie Wilson, Fletcher, Turner and Carrol, Solari and Mayfield into that incredibly misguided group. I find it difficult to comprehend how that mostly well educated, mostly rather articulate group could be so consistently and so completely wrong at every step of the journey. You can’t be that bad, that reliably and that long without outside help.
Please Lynne, by associating smoking with that bunch, you are giving a completely wonderful and healthy habit a bad name.
Thank you, Lynne, for saying so well what many of us felt. We can’t change what’s already occurred. It’s rather pointless to sit around playing the blame game. If there’s a way to salvage this deal, let’s be — as you stated – realistic about the whole thing. And let’s hope those who pushed this through without much thought will kindly step aside and remain silent – if that’s possible.
Trust you, Ed, to add another smile to the conversation. 😉
The “titles” in your story reference “credibility”, yet the antics of the people holding these “titles” are amateurish.
One would think that smart people would know better, research facts and get a better grip on what entails this monumental undertaking.
What resulted is something a bunch of kindergarteners can do with crayons on paper.
Who CAN you hold accountable for this moronic debacle?
Well, I’d certainly hold Fletcher and Turner responsible, as well as Heran, Feherty, Mucher, Stradley and countless others who’ve made such tremendous mistakes. So let’s not let them lead us anywhere at all any more, that’d be my thought.