GUEST COMMENTARY

CHARLIE VITUNAC

Over the last four years numerous editorials have been written by a small but knowledgeable group of Vero Beach supporters advancing arguments which favor keeping the Vero Beach’s electricity generating facilities rather than giving them to FPL. However cogent the ideas expressed in these articles have been, they have failed to sway the hopeless editors of the weekly 32963 or the equally bereft-of-reason opinions of the daily Press Journal, whose president, coincidently, is married to a high-ranking FPL executive.

Before I mention the new, last, best reason for keeping the electric system I encourage you to review the following five reasons, all subjects of previous editorials.

First, under the present Vero Beach control the system provides better daily service and faster response time when there are outages. Anyone who lived through the hurricanes is still thankful for the weeks-long advantage they had getting reconnected to power.

Second, the price differential between FPL and Vero was only about ten percent when the gang of Turner, Fletcher, and Carol took over the City. They intentionally increased local power costs so that a sale to FPL would look better. (An example was forcing the City to pay cash now for long-term capital improvements, which cost should have been spread over the life of the improvements.) With our new council of four Vero Beach-centered councilmembers (Pilar Turner being the only exception) the rate should rapidly return to a more acceptable level.

Third, FPL is allowed about an 11 percent rate of return on their investments. This means that every year 11 percent of the money paid locally for power would leave the county. Vero Beach, on the other hand, chooses to earn less than half that amount. Furthermore, this money is not sent away to stockholders but stays here in Vero Beach to be used to maintain the amenities everyone, county or city resident, expects. Beaches, parks, police protection and the like are all supported by this rate of return.   Taking money out of our county makes us all poorer, keeping it here benefits us all.

Fourth, the tax rate in Vero Beach is kept low by having a utility which pays its own way and provides a rate of return to the City taxpayers. The residents of Vero reap this benefit, but the out-of-city customers also benefit because they get to use the many facilities the City provides free of charge.

Fifth, even before the new council works on renegotiating old power supply contracts to begin reducing our electric rates, comparisons with other electric companies in Florida show that Vero Beach customers pay rates that are in line with rates already found acceptable by the Florida Public Service Commission.

Finally, the new, last, best reason to keep our system. It is been written in the Wall Street Journal and in other publications that one of the major threats to our country’s security is an attack on our infrastructure, especially on the U.S. power grid. We are told that there only a handful of interconnected electric systems which serve the majority of the United States, and that an attack on a significant facility in any one of them could shut one or all of them down for an indeterminate time. Foreign governments (read “China” and “Russia”) have hacked into our power supply computers and perhaps already have the ability to totally disrupt our power systems.

If an attack like this happened what would a community give to be able to power up its own, locally-owned electric supply system? Vero Beach has such a functioning power plant here and now, with existing supplies of fuel. Our community would not be at the mercy of natural disasters, terrorist attacks, or foreign government hacking. Our system protects us and is the envy of other cities. Aren’t these reasons enough to just keep it?