COMMENTARY

“…if Vero Beach voters go to the polls Tuesday believing all the FPL-funded pro-sale post card propaganda, the cost could be no less than $4 million a year in higher taxes.”

MARK SCHUMANN

In the fall of 2009, then candidate Charlie Wilson promised voters he could sell Vero Electric to Florida Power & Light within one year and for a net gain to the City of $90 million. It is now October 30, 2014 and there has yet to be a sale. If the deal is ever concluded, which seems all but impossible, there will surely be no proceeds to the City.

In March 2013, Pilar Turner, along with Tracy Carroll and Craig Fletcher, hastily signed a purchase and sale agreement with FPL. At the time of the contract signing, many key details had yet to be resolved. The agreement, with all its blanks and holes, was then put before voters with the promise of FPL rates by the spring of 2014. It turns out the contract Turner signed was fatally flawed. In fact, utility attorney, Schef Wright, recently told the City Council the deal as agreed to by Turner, Carroll and Fletcher in March 2013 simply cannot be executed.

Now comes Harry Howle, III, who assures the voters of Vero Beach that in any and every budget year he will find a way to cut expenses. In Tea-Party speak, what Howle is saying is that in every budget cycle he can be counted on to further cut municipal services.

Together, Howle, Turner and Wilson want voters to believe they have a plan to sell Vero Electric to FPL. Essentially, the would-be-troika promises to succeed where $500-an-hour attorneys who billed the City $2 million failed. Whatever plan Howle, Turner and Wilson may have cooked up with their patrons at FPL, they certainly are not offering any details, probably because their scheme involves great expense to the City, its taxpayers and electric customers.

Howle, Turner and Wilson, all of whom have raised the majority of the campaign contributions from interests outside the city, seem to be making another promise, this one behind-the-scenes to their patrons and handlers. When it becomes clear their efforts to sell Vero Electric will fail, the new troika can be counted on to reward their out-of-city contributors by cutting electric rates 6 percent in order to eliminate the annual transfer to the general fund. That bright idea will lead to a doubling of city property taxes.

In short, if Vero Beach voters go to the polls Tuesday believing all the FPL-funded pro-sale post card propaganda, the cost could be no less than $4 million a year in higher taxes.