VERO BEACH — The City of Vero Beach and Florid Power and Light have six more months to work out a deal for the electric company to acquire the city’s utility.
The Vero Beach City Council voted 3-2 Tuesday night to extend the due exclusive negotiation period with FPL to Dec. 31.
Earlier in the day at a special call meeting, Gerry Hartman of GAI Consultants gave the council a date in late August when he would have a draft report to the city’s finance and utility commissions of the findings related to GAI’s $238,000 contract to appraise the electric utility and research the city’s options.
When the city goes into those negotiations with FPL, they will soon have special legal counsel representing them on just the electric sale. The council voted Tuesday to retain a transactional attorney to deal strictly with issues related to the sale.
The council can direct staff to spend up to $35,000 in legal fees without going through a formal bid process, and it was unclear Tuesday night if a formal bid process was needed at all to hire an attorney.
The hiring of an attorney just for the utility matters could help the council keep costs down in the City Attorney’s Office. As the city goes through budget workshops this week, the council will need to decide if it wants to stick with just two attorneys on staff or bump back up to three. The department has been down one attorney since former City Attorney cleaned out his desk in February pending termination proceedings.
In other matters related to the electric sale, the council voted 3-2 to ask FPL to assist the city in talks to extricate itself from a 20-year contract with the Orlando Utilities Commission.
There has been a great deal of discussion as of late about what the role of the city council should be in fact-finding and meeting with various entities as part of the electric sale.
On Tuesday night, Acting City Attorney Wayne Coment and the council talked through what they can and cannot do. This was in response to what Councilman Brian Heady and others have called a “gag order” memo that Coment issued a few weeks ago requesting that council members not meet with representatives from FPL about the sale.
The memo also included not meeting with Indian River County officials about details of the offer the county has put on the table to take over the Vero Beach water-sewer utility.
Council members bristled at this, but now have clarification that they are allowed to meet with anyone they want to meet with, as long as it is individually and not with other council members as this could constitute a violation of Florida’s Sunshine Act.
“This council is free to talk to anyone, we’re just not allowed to negotiate,” Councilman Brian Heady said.
Mayor Jay Kramer expressed his concern about the issue of council members getting in the middle of the talks and council members being restricted from certain communications.
“I don’t want to do anything that’s going to induce any type of legal challenge to this thing,” he said.
The Vero Beach City Council reconvenes at 9 a.m. Wednesday for a second day of budget workshops, which continue through Friday. The meetings are televised on Channel 13 and available live-streamed over the internet at www.covb.org.