COMMENTARY
MARK SCHUMANN
Vero Beach Mayor Richard Winger, along with City Attorney Wayne Coment and City Manager Jim O’Connor, met Wednesday with Florida Municipal Power Agency officials in Orlando.
Late Wednesday afternoon, FMPA Assistant General Manager Mark McCain said the agency and the City of Vero Beach would jointly release minutes of the lengthy discussions. The meeting minutes, McCain said, should be available early next week. McCain was not prepared to characterize the discussions or to report on what, if any progress was made.
The meeting had been called by Vero Beach at the request of Florida Power & Light representatives, in hopes of reviving negotiations between the FMPA and FPL. The last round of discussions broke off in early March, after the FMPA rejected a counter offer from FPL. FMPA General Manager Nicholas Guarriello called FPL’s counter offer “unworkable and unacceptable.”
Following an exchange of letters between Guarriello and FPL President Eric Silagy, which signaled and end to their talks, FPL representatives asked Vero Beach officials to approach the FMPA. Their stated objective was to seek a meeting in which FPL negotiators, and presumably the city’s transactional attorneys, would also participate.
In a March 5 letter to O’Connor, Guarriello reiterated the FMPA’s willingness to work with Vero Beach. Guarriello wrote, “I would personally welcome the opportunity to meet with you, your city attorney, and the Mayor to discuss your proposed transaction with FPL and any other issues that Mayor Winger correctly described as parallel goals – with the proposed FPL sale – to achieve the City’s overall goal of lower electric rates for Vero Beach ratepayers.”
Conspicuously absent from Guarriello’s list of suggested participants were representatives of FPL and the city’s transactional attorneys. To informed observers, the clear message in Guarriello’s letter to O’Connor was that the FMPA is through negotiating with FPL regarding Vero Beach’s contractual relationships with the agency.
Apparently unaware of Guarriello’s March 5 letter to O’Connor, Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers’ Stuart opinion columnist, Rich Campbell, wrote a front-page opinion piece Tuesday shedding confusion, rather than light, on the story. Campbell even suggested in his column that having only one elected official (Winger) at the meeting to “skirt” the state’s Sunshine Law was good for them but bad for Vero Beach residents.
Campbell, whose publisher is the husband of an FPL Vice President, requested a seat at the table for the sensitive negotiating session in Orlando, ostensibly to ensure “objective third party” coverage. Campbell is also a member of Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers’ editorial board. From its perch in Stuart, the Scripps editorial board has repeatedly urged Vero Beach to sell its electric system to FPL.
One has to wonder how Campbell could have served as an “impartial third party observer.” Campbell’s assessment of himself and Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers as “impartial,” calls to mind a verse from the pen of the Scottish poet Robert Burns.
“Oh would some power the gift to give us,
to see ourselves as others see us.
It would from many a blunder free us,
and foolish notion.”
Indian River Guardian 
The Press Journal seems to stumble and bumble at every turn in their zeal to make the new city council look bad. Fortunately the Mets minor league team is still at Tradition. Now Rich can go back and cover them.
John, in fairness to Rich, he is an accomplished athlete, a thoughtful commentator and a responsible reporter. In this instance, I think Rich, a Stuart-based opinion columnist, got caught in Scripps’ current strategy of rotating reporters and columnists throughout the Treasure Coast, as if they are engaged in a tag-team wrestling match. They also continue to cling to the illusion that there is such a place as the “Treasure Coast.” The Scripps approach to covering the news of the three Treasure Coast counties as if they are one community may be cost effective, but it does not make for the best reporting. – I’ll give a crisp $100 bill to any Scripps editor who will take me to the city hall in downtown “Treasure Coast.” There is no such place.
Oh for the “Good Old Days” when the weekly VERO BEACH PRESS JOURNAL only came out on Fridays. A crowd always gathered in front of the PJ’s office in the 1300 block of 21st Street late Thursday evening to get an early addition covering only “local” news. As I recall there was some man named Schumann who was Publisher and cared about Vero Beach.