INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — All five members of the Indian River Board of County Commissioners voted Tuesday to issue a resolution supporting a plan presented by Florida Power and Light to pay $52 million to extricate the Vero Beach electric utility’s 34,000 customers from a statewide power co-op.
FPL External Affairs Director Amy Brunjes presented the plan to deliver “a significant discount” to Vero customers at closing.
The new provisions, if accepted by the city and worked into the contract to sell the utility, would require FPL to fund half or $26 million of the payment to the Florida Municipal Power Agency and Vero’s ratepayers to fund the other half in monthly payments over either a three-year or four-year period.
FPL officials say FPL would loan the City of Vero Beach $26 million interest-free until the debt to the FMPA was settled.
The success of the plan hinges upon negotiating the city’s way out of costly, long-term power contracts which could run for more than 50 years if the city doesn’t sell.
Despite an expressed unwillingness by the FMPA to deal with or even meet with FPL on the terms of this plan, FPL is still hopeful that a closing can happen in January 2015.
The plan would give Vero’s customers low FPL rates plus a payment to FMPA, but monthly electric bills would still be lower than they are today while the payments to FMPA were being made.
Currently, Vero customers pay 34 percent more for electricity than FPL customers.
Chairman Peter O’Bryan called the plan “real dollars to real people.”
“This is a huge, complex deal with lots of moving parts and maybe not all willing participants,” O’Bryan said. “Certainly the savings are immediate and they’re significant.”
O’Bryan said Historic Dodgertown facilities alone would save $14,400 of their typical $80,000 per month electric bill. “Those are significant dollars. That’s nothing to sneeze at,” O’Bryan said.
Vero Councilwoman Pilar Turner was on hand at the county meeting and, after being called to the podium, described how the sale of the full Vero electric system to FPL is the only hope of getting substantially lower rates.
“Whatever the City of Vero Beach can do to reduce our rates, it is minimal,” Turner said, responding to various cost-cutting proposals yet to be vetted by city officials.
“We want FPL rates. Let’s support this,” Turner said. “Let’s extricate ourselves from these contracts and move on.”
Responding to much speculation over the past few weeks that the sale of Vero electric to FPL is dead, Brunjes pointed out that the full sale is the only deal on the table that takes care of the city’s 100-plus electric utility workers, guaranteeing them jobs for two years after closing and then offering opportunities within FPL after that for qualified workers. Vice Mayor Jay Kramer has said he thinks Vero should shut down its power plant to help get rates down.
“If they (Vero) close their plant to save money, we’re not going to take those employees. What happens then?” Brunjes said.
The Vero Beach City Council is set to discuss the issue again later this month and to possibly take action in April.
