COMMENTARY
“If they really believe a sale of Vero Electric is possible, Heady, Howle and Moss are not being honest with themselves. Worse, if they realize what they are promising is an impossibility, they are not being honest with the public.”
MARK SCHUMANN
In defiance of logic, and in complete disregard for the facts, three candidates for the Vero Beach City Council seem to have concluded their best chance of winning election rests in misleading the voting public.
To listen to challengers Brian Heady, Harry Howle, Laura Moss, one might conclude all that is needed to complete the proposed sale of Vero Electric to Florida Power & Light is to “just do it.”
Heady, Howle, Moss want voters to believe their assertion that contractual obligations can and will be set aside simply to appease those who are suffering from a fixation that has now become their affliction. The promise of sale is as naive, and ultimately as misleading, as then candidate Barack Obama’s promise to build consensus and bi-partisanship in Washington. I can hear the candidate now. “Can’t we just all get along?”
The legal and contractual impediments to the proposed sale of Vero Electric are as insurmountable as the border wall Donald Trump proposed to build, and at the expense of the Mexican government. It’s not going to happen, just like the sale of Vero Electric is not going to happen, at least not in the foreseeable future.
Heady, Howle and Moss may actually believe their claims, but I doubt it. More likely, it seems, they are counting on voters to join them in hoping agains hope the fine folks at Florida Power & Light will some day pull a rabbit out of their hat. The last time the FPL team tried that trick, the rabbit turned out to be a skunk, in the form of a $26 million surcharge FPL proposed to assessed the customers of Vero Electric.
If they really believe a sale of Vero Electric is possible, Heady, Howle, Moss are not being honest with themselves. Worse, if they realize what they are promising is an impossibility, they are not being honest with the public.
Like local activist, Charlie Wilson, Heady, Howle, Moss are acting more like Hillary Clinton with each passing day.
On the subject of dishonest, disingenuous politicians, the following is a good read:
Hillary Clinton’s Opportunist Solution!
DAVID BROOKS/NEW YORK TIMES
All presidential candidates face a core problem. To win their party’s nomination in an age of growing polarization they have to adopt base-pleasing, pseudo-extreme policy positions. But to win a general election and actually govern they have to adopt semi-centrist majority positions.
How can one person do both?
Nobody had figured this out until, brilliantly, Hillary Clinton. She is campaigning on a series of positions that she transparently does not believe in. She’ll say what she needs to say now to become Bernie Sanders in a pantsuit (wait, Bernie Sanders already wears a pantsuit!). Then, nomination in hand and White House won, she will, it appears, transparently flip back and embrace whatever other positions she doesn’t believe in that will help her succeed in her new role. Continue reading…
Indian River Guardian 
In the Oct,1 ,2015 edition of 32963 news analysis ,Lisa Zahner wrote: Vero Beach was one of the original members of the FMPA and the organization is seen to be the major insurmountable stumbling to Vero being able to sell its utility to Florida Power and Light. Key word INSURMOUNTABLE !!!
The FMPA is NOT an impediment to the sale. Rather, what is preventing the sale of Vero Electric are contractual obligations previous City of Vero Beach leaders took on in good faith, and with good intentions.
At the time the organization was established, FMPA leaders made it clear that if cities banded together to build and finance power project, they were all making multi-decade commitments to each other, to the organization, and most importantly, to their bondholders.
Despite what “Indian River Shores” candidates Moss, Howle and Heady may claim, withdrawing from the FMPA is nothing like resigning membership in the John’s Island Club. Even some bright and competent attorneys who live in the Shores are so blinded by their fixation on the sale that they cannot or will not accept this fact.
Unfortunately, in the process of continuing to insist they can have what they want simply because they want it, Shores leaders are needlessly spending hundred and hundred of thousands of dollars on legal fees. (now more than $600,000) Even worse than the squandered money is the deep divide being created in the community.
Who is Laura Moss? Charlie Wilson in a skirt.