COMMENTARY

MARK SCHUMANN

This week, Vero Beach voters received yet another giant post card paid for by the Alliance for Better Florida Communities. Like an earlier mailing sent out last week by the FPL-funded group, this week’s offering is chock full of lies and speculation.  Other financial supporters of this locally-based electioneering communications organization include the George E. Warren Corporation and The Hill Group.

In additional to promising voters candidates Harry Howle, III, Pilar Turner and Charlie Wilson will accomplish what lawyers who charged the City $2 million in legals fees could not, the Alliance claims Vero Electric’s customers will save 30 percent on their bills, if only the utility is sold to Florida Power & Light.

This exaggerated claim of savings is one of the biggest lies going, at least in local politics. Vero Electric’s rate for 1000 kilowatt hours of residential power is $124.  Thirty percent of $124 is $37.20. Can Vero Electric’s customers expect FPL bills of $86.80, as the Alliance claims?  FPL’s rate is currently $99.19.  After a sale, the City will almost surely do as the County does and assess a 6 percent franchise fee on utility service. The resulting FPL bill, then, will be $105.14 for 1000 kilowatt hours, not $86.80.

Howle, Turner and Wilson have collected the majority of their campaign contributions for interests outside the city.  Now comes these FPL-funded mailers, all cleverly designed and worded to dup the people of Vero Beach into support three candidates willing to drive Vero Beach into disincorporations, if necessary, in order to help the state’s largest investor owned utility expand its customer base.

Vero Beach voters need to wake up and show up.  Otherwise, they may arise Nov. 5 to find that Keeping Vero Beach will have become an impossibility.