INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — County Commissioner Bob Solari faced off against All Aboard Florida President and Chief Development Officer Michael Reininger, in an organized debate held before a sold-out banquet room at the Taxpayers’ Association luncheon on Wednesday. Approximately 156 people were in attendance.
The debate hinged around Solari’s concerns that All Aboard Florida and its owner, Fortress Investment Group, refuse to fully disclose important details around the high-speed rail project that will affect the wallets of tax payers.
“I believe the main reason so many of us are against the project, is because the people from Fortress have simply not been telling the truth, and the citizens of the Treasure Coast know this,” Solari said. “We can feel that we are being told half truths, and are being mislead.”
Solari originally supported the All Aboard Florida project that intends to run 32 high-speed passenger trains per day through Indian River County on the trains’ route between Orlando and Miami. His support rested on the fact that All Aboard Florida was made out to be a private project built on private property by a private company.
But his support and that of the Board of County Commissioners was rescinded once it was made known that All Aboard Florida would be applying for federal and state loans.
With the application of state and federal loans, Solari argued, comes the responsibility for All Aboard Florida to reveal its business plan to the citizens who will be paying the bill.
Without a subsidy, Solari said, All Aboard Florida and its private investment firm could stay under wraps about its plan.
“But once you agree that the taxpayers are paying for that subsidy, the argument against non-disclosure goes away, and the public has the right and the elected official has the duty to ask for an investment grade business plan to see if the taxpayer dollars are being protected,” Solari said.
In regards to Solari’s accusations about transparency and half-truths, Reininger said he remained confused. Like any other private entity, Reininger argued, All Aboard Florida is and should be able to apply for loans such as the RRIF loan- Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing Loan.
“Whether you call it a subsidy or a loan, I sort of don’t understand the difference,” Reininger said. “I’m unclear as to whether the position is that we here in Florida should not benefit from the incentives that this (RRIF) program was designed to provide, and that we are saying that somehow we’re fine with those benefits of that existing program going to Texas or California or New York or Illinois. Or if what we’re really saying is, we just don’t want All Aboard Florida to avail themselves of those benefits. Either of these two positions seems to me to be a wrongheaded approach.”
Reininger further sweetened the idea of the All Aboard Florida project to the crowd in which a majority of attendees were visibly in support of Solari.
According to Reininger, the project would provide $192 million in economic impact for the County and create almost 400 jobs during the construction period.
Solari countered Reiniger’s points saying the short economic boom would not be enough to cover the fallout that would be certain to follow.
During another attempt to reassure those in attendance, Reininger explained away the concern of property values in the vicinity of the railway.
“We have studied all of the documentation in detail, and what we’ve come to understand is that, most times when there are studies that presume some negative result in property values, that those property values are really associated with freight trains, not with passenger trains,” Reininger said. “In fact there are many studies that show quite the opposite, that the introduction of passenger service into corridors drives increase, significantly increased property values for the properties that are adjacent to that passenger rail.”
He continued, saying that the biggest issue that affects property values for properties near freight trains is the presence of a horn. But the horns are a non-issue since All Aboard Florida announced this morning at a meeting in Boca Raton, according to Reininger, that the company will be covering all costs associated with quiet zones for the length of the railway.
Despite his attempt at improving his popularity with the information on property values, Reininger was met with a crowd full of audible laughter when he concluded property values could potentially increase.
At the conclusion of Solari’s final statements, a vast majority of the room honored him with a standing ovation.
Currently, All Aboard Florida is in it’s first phase of development. Indian River County and the rest of the Treasure Coast will fall into the second phase, according to Reininger.
