COMMENTARY
“Vero Beach and Indian River Shores leaders have everything to gain and nothing to lose by setting aside their differences and working together to make the best decisions possible to lower rates for all the customers of Vero Electric.”
MARK SCHUMANN
Faced with the option of triggering a long-shot lawsuit against Vero Beach that could cost the taxpayers of Indian River Shores and the customers of Vero Electric millions of dollars, or allowing more time for negotiations, the Shores Town Council this week, in a 3-2 vote, wisely bought more time.
Siding with Mayor Brian Barefoot were Vice Mayor Gerry Weick and Council Tom Slater.
Against them stood Councilmen Dick Haverland and Michael Ochsner, neither of whom has have yet to level with Indian River Shores residents on the likely cost of litigating the Town’s grievances against Vero Beach. Just how much are Haverland and Ochsner willing to raise in taxes to pay for a lawsuit that will almost surely take years to work its way to the Florida Supreme Court?
In their vote this week, Barefoot, Weick and Slater showed a levelheadedness that, of late, has largely been lacking in local politics.
Given the Shores Town Council’s decision to delay legal action, Vero Beach leaders should act to redress the Shores’ legitimate grievances, starting with forming a utility authority that will be truly representative of all 34,000 customers of Vero Electric.
The fact is that an earlier Vero Beach City Council and city manager circumvented the will of the Florida Legislature by refusing to hold a referendum on forming a utility authority. It is time to right that wrong.
Vero Beach leaders face important choices in how to lower electric rates. Just as importantly, though, they must now choose whether to be collaborative.
On the table are three options for renegotiating the City’s wholesale power agreement with the Orlando Utilities Commission. The input and advice of Shores leaders should be sought in this decision.
Should the power plant be decommissioned? Should Vero Electric’s rate structure be revised to more fairy balance the burden of residential and commercial customers? What proposals likely to emerge from a system optimization study should be implemented?
In all of these decisions, the input and advice of Shores leaders should be sought. After all, the residents of Indian River Shores are captive customers of Vero Electric. Telling them how things are going to be done, rather than inviting their input, is no way to be neighborly.
I’ve been thinking lately about how our individual points of view cannot encompass anything close to the larger picture.
One of the blessings of a marriage, of course, is that we are gifted with a second set of eyes with which to see the world – and ourselves. We cannot benefit from that gift, though, unless we are willing to be shown by another how to see in a different way.
Or, consider that pilots flying on instruments in conditions of limited visibility must not trust their kinesthetic senses, but must instead be guided by outside input, namely from their navigation instruments. Similarly, until a new utility authority is in place, the Vero Beach City Council should find other ways to seek input from Shores leaders.
Carefully crafted explanations about how Vero Beach leaders have in the past made the best decisions they could at the time will not erase the fact that some decisions were made, such as the OUC wholesale power purchase agreement, that haven’t worked out so well.
Vero Beach and Indian River Shores leaders have everything to gain and nothing to lose by setting aside their differences and working together to make the best decisions possible to lower rates for all the customers of Vero Electric.
Indian River Guardian 
The fact is that Mayfield passed a bill attempting to circumvent home rule, and attempting to put the fate of the City utility solely in the hands of the county. If something is ill-intended and designed for fraud, the City had every right to keep to the letter of the bill and count it’s customers accordingly. If the County actually wasn’t trying to bankrupt the city, perhaps the “will of the legislature” would be more suspect.
Previous councils have dealt honestly and professioally with the restrictions placed upon the utility, ones that the Turner-Heran crowd decided to ignore. We paid dearly for those triumverate failures. I hope trying to simplify this issue doesn’t mean we are throwing out the facts to please the county people who have been led to believe so many false ideas.
Lynne, I have heard from some who are seriously concerned that a utility authority would become just another level of political appointments. They could be right about that. One utility authority that is working well, I am told, is the Kissimmee Utility Authority.
The larger point here is to give the outside ratepayers a voice. How that can be accomplished without putting the monkeys in charge of the zoo, so to speak, is the challenge. The objections to a utility authority now raised by the island weekly and the Heran-Faherty-Turner-FPL crowd makes one wonder if forming one isn’t exactly the thing to do.
What the Heran-Faherty-Turner-FPL folks least want is to lose an excuse for continuing to sew seeds of discontent by making the bogus claim of “taxation without representation.” In fact, the more I consider the intensity with which they argue that the City does not deserve a return on its investment the more I wonder if, deep down, they are socialists – anti-capitalist, anti-profit, socialists.
The city of Vero Beach is entitled to a return on investment,period, It is a known fact that Turner wants to be a commissioner, so her votes on the city council reflect that goal much to the detriment of the city . We all know of Herans connections ,so everything he says must be somewhat suspect. Lets hope that FPL stays out of our elections in the future.