COMMENTARY

“Moss has a peculiar sense of neighborliness, if she thinks it would be right to sell off at a fire sale price Vero Electric’s wealthiest customers just so they can enjoy FPL rates. Doing so would result in having to shaft the remaining customers, including out-of-city customers, with higher rates.”

MARK SCHUMANN

During a recent radio interview, Vero Beach city council candidate Laura Moss repeatedly insisted city leaders should learn to be neighborly.

Presumably Moss is calling for a pacifist response from the city to parallel legal attacks launched last year by the Indian River Shores Town Council and the Indian River County Commission.

The County Commission has literally made a Supreme Court case out of its insistence on forcing Vero Beach to abandon its out-of-city customers. The Florida Public Service Commission disagrees with the five legal wizards on the Indian River County Commission and has filed a brief with the court on behalf of Vero Beach. Nearly every other utility in Florida, including FPL, also question’s the County Commission’s claim to authority in establishing Vero Beach’s service territory.

Across town, across the Lagoon, and seemingly across the universe, the Shores Town Council has spent more than half a million dollar in a legal fight to force Vero Beach to abandon its Shores customers. In this case, too, the PSC is siding with Vero Beach. Essentially, PSC lawyers argue that the five members of the Indian River Shores “Home Owners Association,” do not have more authority than the State of Florida.

Against both of these legal challenges, the members of the Vero Beach City Council, with the notable exception of Pilar Turner, are defending the interests of the city’s residents, taxpayers and electric customers. Like Turner, and her protégé, Harry Howle, Moss does not consider this approach neighborly.

In her call for neighborliness, maybe Moss is suggesting that in order to give Vero Electric’s out-of-city and Shores customers rates comparably to FPL, city leaders should greatly increase electric rates for city residents. Never mind that Vero Electric is already charging rates lower than the PSC has approved for several investor-owned utilities. This fact is completely lost on Moss, Turner, Howle and the overgrown children in Indian River Shores who seem to believe they have a birthright to the lowest electric rates in the state.

Moss is new enough to the community that she may not realize the residents of Indian River Shores, and those living in the unincorporated area of the south barrier island, have electric and water and sewer service today because Vero Beach leaders several decades ago agreed to serve their neighbors. With Vero Beach’s investment in extending utilities to the Shores and to the south barrier island, both areas were able to develop, and are now two of the wealthiest enclaves in the country. The ends of the barrier island are also home to more than a few bored, unoccupied, endless complainers,

This past Tuesday, Moss joined Brian Heady to do some campaigning before the cameras. Both candidates were clearly seeking free airtime to aid them in their bids for seats on the council. At one point, Moss explained that her voice was strained because she had been out “talking” to lots of people. I wonder if the political newcomer has also been doing any listening.

Like Councilwoman Turner, and Turner’s anointed one, Harry Howle, Moss seems to think Vero Beach should hand over its Shores customers to FPL at a price so low the move would inevitably lead to higher rates for Vero Electric’s remaining customers, half of whom live in unincorporated areas of Indian River County.

Moss has a peculiar sense of neighborliness, if she thinks it would be right to sell off at a fire sale price Vero Electric’s wealthiest customers just so they can enjoy FPL rates. Doing so would result in having to shaft the remaining customers, including out-of-city customers, with higher rates.

Moss’ sense of neighborliness seems to encompass nothing more than capitulating to the Indian River Shores Town Council, everyone else be damned.