OUR VIEW | $682 million for what?

The dollar amounts were so stunning we had to make sure you didn’t miss them. So we are reprinting for the second consecutive week the amount of money Longboat Key taxpayers in the Sarasota County half of the island have sent across the bay the past decade.

Nearly a half-billion dollars.

Now add to that the tax dollars from the Longboat Key taxpayers who live in the Manatee County half of the island. That’s typically 40% of the Sarasota total, or another $195 million.

Altogether: $682 million in a decade. Roughly $68 million a year.

School taxes account for 60%; the remainder goes as you can see in the accompanying table, albeit with a few modifications between Manatee and Sarasota counties.

Suffice it to say, in direct return, Longboat Key taxpayers receive a negligible amount.

In national and state politics, when you’re the kind of contributor Longboat Key is to the counties, typically you are noticed, you usually get a seat at the front table and you have your phone calls answered.

Longboat Key infrequently receives that kind of treatment, and Longboaters don’t demand or beg for it. But every now and then, public school, county and health care elected officials whose operations benefit from the Key could show their gratitude.

Some Sarasota County officials might argue that $2 million the Sarasota County Commission approved for redeveloping Bayfront Park is indeed a show of thanks. But compared with the $487 million over the past decade, that’s barely even a wink. 

Hmmm. When it comes time for support on the county’s $175 million facilities bond issue next year, that may be a good time to bring up funding for a new recreation center.

How Winter Park confronted buried power lines

BY STEVEN LEMONGELLO | ORLANDO SENTINEL

When the city of Boulder, Colo., was considering breaking away from its longtime energy company and forming its own city-run utility, it turned to a town with hard-fought experience: Winter Park.

“It was the best thing the city has ever done,” said former Commissioner Barbara DeVane. “I’m glad we took it on — and plus, it’s making money.”

Winter Park’s independence from Progress Energy-owned Florida Power & Light was one of the most acrimonious battles in its history, marked by a fierce campaign in which a Progress-backed group spent half a million dollars warning voters the city wouldn’t be able to handle running a utility.

The city, meanwhile, focused on the company’s frequent unreliability and outages, or as one Sentinel story noted at the time: “If you make people reset their videocassette recorders enough, they’ll get mad — really mad.”

Now, 10 years after the switch was flipped in June 2005, the city has more than 14,000 electric customers and $48 million in annual revenue, allowing it to pay back the $14 million advanced by the city’s general fund.

The city said that current monthly customer rates are 12% less than those of Duke Energy, which took over Progress in 2012, and an average of 2.5% less during 10 years. Reliability has also improved, the city said, with an average of fewer than one interruption per customer per year.

Winter Park also has buried almost 60% of its wires underground, about 113 miles’ worth, and hopes to finish the conversion within eight years at a cost of $3.5 million to $4 million a year — with the assistance of Duke Energy, which still owns wires along Lee Road, West Fairbanks Avenue and other areas annexed after the changeover.

But despite Winter Park’s numbers, the city is still one of the few to have made the change — and it may be one of the last.

Every other Central Florida city whose 30-year agreement with Progress expired around the same time as Winter Park’s — including Longwood, Lake Mary, Oviedo, Altamonte Springs, Apopka, Casselberry and Maitland — stayed on with the private utility, with many fearing a years-long litigation process.

“It was the best thing the city has ever done. I’m glad we took it on — and plus, it’s making money.” — Barbara Devane, former winter park commissioner

In the decade since, few towns have looked into the idea. South Daytona went the furthest in 2012, but voters decided against it after an opposition campaign by Florida Power & Light similar to Progress’ campaign in Winter Park.

“With any business, and certainly the utility industry, it’s always disappointing to lose any part of your customer base,” said Duke spokeswoman Valerie Patterson, adding the company still serves 1.7 million customers in Florida.

As for the other city-run utilities in the area such as in Orlando, Kissimmee and Mount Dora, most have been city-owned dating back to the early 20th century. Winter Park sold its city utility in 1927.

When the latest franchise agreement with Progress came up for renewal in the early 2000s, “it was a once-in-a-30-year opportunity to look at it,” said City Manager Randy White.

“In some ways, it was the first opportunity to ever look at it,” added Electric Utility Director Jerry Warren, then a consultant for the city.

A group had formed to share stories of blinking clocks and frequent outages — an average of about 22 interruptions a year for each customer.

Even after a lawsuit and a dispute over revenue-sharing, the City Commission was split 2-2 on breaking away until Devane, who was opposed, asked for a guarantee to improve the company’s reliability. It was refused, Warren said, and Devane changed her mind.

The purchase price was $43 million, and the referendum just four months later brought out almost half of all registered voters — the second-largest turnout in Winter Park in the past 25 years. The result was a lopsided 69% vote in favor of splitting off.

“And then the real work began,” Knight said.

The utility’s biggest test was during Tropical Storm Fay in 2008, when 3,000 city customers had outages.

“Under the previous system, we had no control when electric [workers] showed up or where they showed up,” Knight said. “We’d send firefighters out to start to clear wires, and they couldn’t touch it until electric guys got there.”

Having 16 utility workers dedicated to only the 8-square-mile system allowed quicker reaction time, Warren said, resulting in all power regained within two days — while 12,000 remained without power elsewhere in Florida.

“We proved to them the little guys can do it just like they can,” Warren said.

Why haven’t other towns followed suit? Warren believed it was because many are afraid to deal with the massive push-back from utilities.

“It requires political courage in the face of a really big entity,” Warren said. “That’s a scary thing for elected officials to do.”

Letter from a reader

As a Central Florida resident visiting Sarasota recently, I read the June 4 Longboat Observer article, “The Bottom Lines,” with interest.  

The article about a forthcoming vote on burying utility lines reminded me of the experience of Winter Park after it acquired its utility franchise from Florida Power & Light (FPL) and decided to bury many of its utility lines.  

Then, lo and behold, an article about Winter Park’s experience appeared June 8 in the Orlando Sentinel.

If the Longboat Key Town Commission seeks to bury these lines, it  might consider some way of buying the franchise, as did Winter Park.  

Otherwise, both local business owners and residents will pay the estimated $1.8 million for the project as a subsidy for FPL.  
If the town acquired the franchise itself, as in the Winter Park’s experience, over the long haul the project would pay for itself at considerably less “sunk” cost to the ratepayers.

Jay Jurie
Orlando