COMMENTARY
Related story: City’s water and sewer utility a vital asset
MARK SCHUMANN
In his most recent “Utility Update” newsletter, utility activist Stephen Faherty signaled what many already suspect. Once a new contract for the sale of Vero Electric to FPL is signed, the next move by local limited government extremists will be to persuade the people of Vero Beach their is something wrong with owning a water and sewer utility that returns some $1 million a year to the General Fund to help pay for basic municipal services.
Faherty wrote, “After the end of the year, it would be good for the City to ask the County to dust off the County’s past offer to buy the City’s WSI system which included connecting the City WSI plant on the 3rd corner to the County’s WSI system (cost would be about $35 M to move the WSI plant from the Lagoon if I recall correctly from prior City estimates) and then clearing the 3rd corner for City use.”
Several year ago, the County made an offer of approximately $20 million to buy Vero Beach’s profitable and well-run water and sewer utility. Though the County tried to package its bargain-basement offer as a magnanimous attempt to rescue Vero Beach, the truth is that the County very much needs Vero Beach’s water and sewer customer base to make its own over-built system more viable.
On the other side of the table, the City does not exactly need the County, or it’s insultingly low offer. Vero Beach’s rates and service are at least comparable to the County’s, and the City’s system, by all reasonable measures, is well run. (I know a couple who own property in the City and the County. Their dog will drink City water without hesitation, but does not much like County water. Personally, I’ll trust one dog’s taste preferences over all the experts the County might hire.)
Likely, though, ownership of the water and sewer utility will not be an issue in this fall’s municipal election. Instead, Phyllis Frey and company seem determined to argue, without any basis of fact, that proposed updates to the City’s comprehensive land use plan are part of a dark and sinister scheme orchestrated by the regional planning council to fool Vero Beach leaders into unwittingly agreeing to allow for high-density development. The kindest thing that can be said about this conspiracy theory is that it is based on alternate facts mined from an alternative reality. (Frey herself lives in a high-rise, high-density development on the central barrier island.)
The Utilities and Finance Commissions are to hold a joint meeting tomorrow to consider the terms of FPL’s proposed purchase of Vero Electric. Given the cost of settling existing obligations – $108 million to the Florida Municipal Power Agency and $20 million to the Orlando Utilities Commission – the City will be left with about $25 million, plus retained reserves of another $30 million. On the face of it, the deal does not make much sense. Dig beneath the service and you realize City leaders have no plan for how to make up for the more than $7 million transferred annually for the Utility Fund to the General Fund.
Indian River Guardian 