Alachua Voter Guide

Commissioner Susan Bottcher in today’s Gainesville Sun wrote a Speaking Out piece that Sun editorial page editor Ron Cunningham considers to be a non politically motivated piece written by a sitting city commission candidate who simply decried the generally negative tone of the current city commission campaigns and cautioned voters not to be taken in by scare tactics. In some parallel universe occupied by Commissioner Bottcher — who has submitted campaign cash to her hand picked pro-GRU-GREC-biomass-deal-at-any-cost favorites and is working daily behind the scenes to attempt to secure their election — Commissioner Bottcher is a statesman rather than a political turf preserving politico, and as such should be protected from rebuttal by a mere candidate.

The rebuttal The Sun will not publish:

COMMISSIONER BOTTCHER’S ASSAULT ON VOTER COMMON SENSE

As has been reported recently in The Gainesville Sun, national and international investors have been buying and selling and slicing and dicing the economic future of the citizens and ratepayers of our community (“Part owner of biomass plant sells 40% stake,” January 18, 2012).

The owners of the rights to income from GRU ratepayers for the so-called GREC biomass plant – if it gets built – continue to play their game of musical chairs. For now the owners of GREC are opaque limited liability entities from Minnesota, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut, with high-risk-high-return investors from around the world, backed by 14 to 15 percent interest money lenders are from France, the Netherlands and Japan.

These money changers, as the Gainesville City Commission election heats up, are depending on the assistance of oh-so-superior city commissioners like Susan Bottcher to try to ensure that the more-than-$3-billion looting of Gainesville’s electric ratepayers can continue unabated. Bottcher (“The world is watching our city now,” January 23, 2012) is doing all she can to deliver.

First, Bottcher superciliously lectures us simple-minded Gainesville citizens that we are “being watched by national and international investors and entrepreneurs.”

Next, she patronizingly instructs us that we had better not embarrass her and her political allies with our “provincial political negativity.”

Next, she arrogantly dismisses the positive civic participation of public-spirited citizens who deign to question decisions she and her friends would seek to force down our throats, which puts at risk the echo-chamber-intensified magical thinking that in her mind has led to “this proud point in our history.”

Next, she haughtily derides citizen demands for city commission accountability as nothing more than “fear” that could threaten what she believes to be the “collective vision” of the “best of our community.”

Finally, she condescendingly instructs Gainesville voters that what she and her fellow travelers believe represents “progress,” and that what others believe represents “a step backwards.”

What’s going on here?

Bottcher’s intent seems clear: On the eve of an historically important city of Gainesville election she wants to convince voters to abandon their own self interest and elect GRU-GREC-biomass-deal-at-any-cost-to-ratepayers candidates in the hope of keeping the GRU-GREC biomass contract irregularities from being reviewed and brought before the public.

Bottcher and four other city commissioners have donated money to the campaigns of these candidates in a desperate attempt to keep new commissioners from being elected who would insist on a public examination of the looming wood burning incinerator disaster. These candidates have shown themselves willing to adopt the talking points of Bottcher and friends, and to join and reinforce their attempts to close down discussion of the GRU-GREC biomass electric rate hikes – this despite the disproportionate burden with which the most economically vulnerable members of our community will be saddled if the GRU-GREC biomass scheme is allowed to continue.

Bottcher’s modus is to express scorn for Gainesville voters who ask questions – apparently on the theory that such pompous lecturing will hold back the rising tide of voter resentment.

Good luck with that.

All are invited to Leonardo’s 706 (at 706 West University Avenue in District 1) for a “Final Nail in the Biomass Rate Hike Coffin Campaign Fund Raiser” from at 6 p.m. – 8 p.m. on Monday, January 23. It is my only fundraiser of the election. The purpose is to raise funds to ensure voters in District 1 have vital information about the GRU-GREC biomass deal.  It will have an additional purpose of helping fund further communication of information to At Large 1 voters.

We hope to see you there!

This press release in Marketwatch:

 GREENWICH, Conn., Jan. 17, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — An investment affiliate of Starwood Energy Group Global, LLC (“Starwood Energy”), an energy infrastructure investment firm, has acquired a partial ownership interest in the Gainesville Renewable Energy Center (“GREC”) from Tyr Energy, Inc. GREC is a 100 MW biomass power plant currently under construction in Gainesville, Florida. The acquisition was signed and closed on December 30, 2011. Read more

If you read the rest, where it gets all rosy and fuzzy about how wonderful the plant is for Gainesville, remember that this is a PRESS RELEASE It is not news in the sense that an investigative report is. But I have to wonder why, on the last day of 2011, Tyr Energy decided to get out of such a wonderful deal. The plant is in the middle of construction and has not burned the first twig, and these guys, presumably, took a profit. And the buyer, Starwood Energy, thinks this is an even better deal than it was when it was still a heavily redacted contract that the public knew nothing about.

Where are all these fabulous profits coming from? The public! I guess that’s why it’s a Public Utility: it burns ratepayers.

At any public event, candidates come out to be seen. Go to any watermelon festival, county fair, football game, and you will see a campaign sign and people wearing T-shirts touting a candidate. I have done these things myself. I have even seen hand-held signs printed with a candidate’s name in churches that had no air conditioning!

In this video, some of Lauren Poe’s people seemed to have crossed a line, at least with one dude. To him, it seemed disrespectful to the memory of Martin Luther King to tote around signs for a political candidate. The young man who defended himself held his ground, citing his first amendment rights, and pointing out that there were other signs present. He may have been singled out, but it was only because they were the most obvious offenders.

It’s all a judgment call, people! Even if he’s right to hold that sign, I know at least one voter who will not be voting for Poe!

The Gainesville Sun in its elections portal, which went on line today, has performed a service similar to the service attempted by the Alachua Voter Guide.

Thoughtful voters researching the issues and the candidates’ stands on the issues will use both of these resources prior to casting their votes.

The City Commission District 1 race was highlighted today in the print version of The Sun, featuring candidate responses to identical questions about issues considered important by The Sun.

As to the fiscally-irresponsible, irregularly-negotiated, out-of-the-Sunshine $3 billion to $4 billion GRU-GREC biomass deal the question posed to each District 1 candidate was:

“What are your thoughts on the city’s 30-year contract to purchase biomass power?”

I hope my answer expressed the urgency I feel — and the urgency that many members of this community feel — about the need for the city commission to immediately act to reverse the corrupting influence of this bad contract with which a previous commission (and the majority of the current commissioners were part of that) so inexplicably (and largely secretly) saddled this community.

I wrote: “This bad contract has become the defining issue of this election. I was part of the legal team representing public-spirited Gainesville area citizens whose efforts on April 6 resulted in previously secret portions of the GRU-GREC contract being unblackened. I became a candidate after weeks of trying to convince the two candidates for my district’s commission seat to oppose the coming GRU-GREC electric rate hike. They both declined to do so. The most important duty of any candidate elected to the City Commission will be to readdress the GRU-GREC deal in light of current circumstances, this time fully in the sunshine.”

This city is facing many urgent and important problems of great complexity which also will need to be addressed, but which cannot be adequately addressed until the city commission stops hiding the ball from the public and courageously addresses the GRU-GREC biomass deal in the light of day, without regard for protecting anyone except the citizens of this community whose economic interests have been sacrificed for reasons that are not yet clear.

As to the positions of the other two District 1 candidates, those positions are telling.

Candidate Grundy, in a response he purports to have written himself, states: “This is an issue that has been voted on unanimously by the City Commission and is already under construction, so as a candidate there is not much any candidate can do about the contract. Should the issue go through a legal challenge and is overturned by the court, then obviously the city will change direction. The biomass plant is already under construction, and I will continue to ask more questions and gather more information and be open to all points of view; however, I do not see much that can be done right now.”

Of course a candidate can’t do much until elected — but a candidate can speak out against the biomass electric rate hike and pledge to do all he or she can do stop it. This is something Mr. Grundy, who is the handpicked successor of the pro-biomass-rate-hike commissioner whose seat Mr. Grundy wishes to occupy, has refused to do.

Candidate Hinson-Rawls, in a response she purports to have written herself, states: : “Biomass will help bring jobs to Gainesville. I will fight to make sure costs to residents are minimized. However, the city must continue to diversify our energy options to lower utilities costs for residents both now and in the future. Gainesville has an opportunity to become a leader in alternative energy. I also believe there must be a systematic approach to educating residents about how to maximize efficient use of their energy to bring costs down now and in the future.”

These are virtually the same words written and spoken by four GRU-GREC-biomass-deal-at-any-cost-to-the-pubic commissioners — Mayor Lowe and Commissioners Bottcher, Mastrodicasa and Hawkins — have written and spoken previously. These four commissioners — all of whom are paid public salaries and all of whom have written checks with this fungible money to Candidate Hinson-Rawls in an effort to ensure the election of another GRU-GREC-biomass-deal-at-any-cost-to-the-public commissioner — have been unable to defend these specious claims, and how have left their hand-picked candidate twisting in the wind, also unable to justify these claims.

1. “Biomass” will not bring any more jobs to Gainesville than any other electrical generating plant, and probably will bring less. The out-of-state private limited liability company GREC has awarded a (secret from the public) operating contract for the plant to a Kansas-based company without any requirement that the company hire the expected 40 plant operation employees locally. (If the city commission had ordered GRU to build its own plant it could have also ordered GRU to hire locally). Worse, the most recent best case scenario figures promulgated by GRU executives (who themselves earn six-figure ratepayer-funded salaries and are behind the unnecessary construction of a new $52 million Taj Mahal GRU administrative building complete with a health spa from which the public is excluded) posits that the annual cost of the so-called GRU-GREC biomass electric power contract at best will be $103 million (more than twice the cost of electricity purchased on the open market and well over twice the cost of electricity that could be produced by GRU from a ratepayer-owned combined cycle natural gas generating facility). GRU’s executives and their GRU-GREC-biomass-deal-at-any-cost-the-public-be-damned defenders on the city commission who have made Candidate Hinson-Rawls “jobs” argument, base that claim on a specious best-case-scenario specially-commissioned FSU study (whose premises have been shown to be erroneous). But even that faulty study demonstrates that $31 million in economic benefit that allegedly would flow from the GRU-GREC biomass plant would not flow to Gainesville, as Ms. Hinson-Rawls claims (or as is claimed on her behalf, but would flow to the broad GREC “catchment area” of northeast Florida and south Georgia. Ms. Hinson-Rawls’ backers (including GRU-GREC contractors whose secret contracts have been kept from the public and who have made large contributions to her campaign) know, if Ms. Hinson-Rawls does not, that 99 percent of the forest land from which most of the trees and parts of trees that would be burned up in the GRU-GREC incinerator is located outside of Alachua County, and that the largest trees-and-parts-of-trees supply contract (which contract has been kept secret from the public) has been awarded to the multi-national Rayonier Real Estate Investment Trust which has identified 200,000 acres of forest land, most of it in the so-called GREC biomass incinerator catchment area (but not in Alachua County), which forest land Rayonier has publicly stated it intends to strip of trees and turn into real estate developments (again, none of which will be in Alachua County). Finally, to add public insult to public injury, even if the FSU study touted by Candidate Hinson-Rawls’ backers was not faulty, and even if the alleged $31 million in money actually flowed just to Gainesville rather than to 24 other counties and a multinational Real Estate Investment Trust, the alleged $31 million economic benefit from an overpriced $103 million contract of which $50 million to $60 million in not necessary is no deal at all.

2. The idea that Candidate Hinson-Rawls — who with her backers fully supports the coming GRU-GREC biomass electric rate hike — would “fight to make sure costs to residents are minimized” would be ludicrous if her willingness to carry water for her backers were so invidious and so unfair to residents of the city in particularly and economically depressed District 1 in particular.

3. Candidate Hinson-Rawls’ claim that “there must be a systematic approach to educating residents about how to maximize efficient use of their energy to bring costs down” is even more insulting. In her zeal to support the political motives of her backers over the economic interests of her would-be-constituents Candidate Hinson-Rawls not only defends unjustified and unjustifiable electric rate hikes, but also argues that Gainesville residents are not “educated” and sets the stage for placing the the blame on her her would-be-constituents for the electric rate hikes she should be fighting.

Inasmuch as Candidates Grundy’s and Hinson-Rawls’ position statements are purported to be self-penned, we as voters can take these responses as the actual positions of these candidates.

INFORMATION SUPPRESSION, DISINFORMATION, THREAT AND ATTACK

Mark van Soestbergen writes in The Gainesville sun this morning that, from his perspective, “It was nice to see the GRU response over the weekend regarding biomass financials.”

The so-called “biomass financials” response of which Mr. Soestbergen is so enamored is a reference to two letters authored by two highly-paid GRU officials in the January 8 letters-to-the-editor section of The Sun.

These letters – written presumably during work hours and therefore funded by the very ratepayers GRU officials have been attempting to silence – were signed by GRU Assistant General Manager Kathy E. Viehe and GRU Marketing and Communications Manager J. Lewis Walton.

Ms. Viehe and Mr. Walton are part of a vanguard of top GRU officials – many of them being paid more than $100,000 per year, and at least one them being paid more than $200,000 per year – who have been unleashed upon GRU ratepayers in an orchestrated campaign of information suppression, disinformation, threat and attack.

The efforts by Ms. Viehe, Mr. Walton and other GRU officials – efforts sanctioned and applauded by Mayor Craig Lowe and Regional Utilities Committee Chair Commissioner Susan Bottcher and a few other GRU-GREC-biomass-deal-at-any-cost-hide-the-ball city officials – have recently included official jail threats against three senior citizens and a young African American man who have been fostering a welcome dialogue with and providing a voice to hundreds of beleaguered GRU ratepayers wanting a forum in which to express their opposition to the coming GRU-GREC biomass electric rate hikes.

Hear some of their voices, which GRU officials and collaborators on the city commission have been trying so desperately to suppress:

http://saive.com/STEVEN.html

http://saive.com/TRESIA.html

http://saive.com/ELOISE.html

http://saive.com/LORENE.html

http://saive.com/JACQUELINE.html

http://saive.com/YOLANDA.html

Ms. Viehe – whose views are apparently identical with those of Mayor Lowe, Commissioner Bottcher and their allies on the city commission who support and applaud GRU’s threats to have Gainesville citizens jailed for expressing their First Amendment free speech and peaceable assembly rights – wrote in her ratepayer-funded Sun letter-to-the-editor that GRU is justified in summoning GPD police officers “when someone becomes disruptive,” as GRU officials define “disruptive.”

Mr. Walton – whose views are also apparently identical to those of Mayor Lowe, Commissioner Bottcher and their allies on the city commission, and whose views Mr. van Soestbergen applauds – used his ratepayer-funded Sun letter-to-the-editor to attempt to call into question the credibility of one of the senior citizens GRU has threatened with jail and who dares to declare that irregularly negotiated GRU-GREC biomass deal is “a tremendous wealth transfer to an out-of-state company, at the expense of ratepayers.”

Wrote Mr. Walton, in rebuttal: “Nothing could be further from the truth that there is a wealth transfer out of state with biomass. Currently GRU sends millions of dollars out of state to buy coal and natural gas.”

Mr. Walton’s letter is misleading, and, presumably intended to mislead, with the complete approval of GRU’s top brass and the majority of the members of the Gainesville City Commission. What Mr. Walton fails to explain is that even if the $3-billion-to-$4-billion-GRU-GREC-biomass deal were allowed to proceed – and I am pledged if elected to the Gainesville City Commission to do all within my power to assure that it does not proceed – GRU according to its own published 10-year plan will not as a result reduce by a single ounce its imports of coal. Far from replacing coal burning, the biomass plant, according to GRU’s ten-year plans, will be used to sell power to the City of Alachua, Clay Electric and others at rates far lower than GRU intends to charges Gainesville area customers.

Now on the heels of Mr. Walton’s ratepayer-funded obfuscation comes GRU-GREC-biomass-deal-at-any-cost fellow traveler Mr. van Soestberger who claims, falsely, that “for every dollar it costs GRU to provide electricity, 70 cents goes to fuel,” and that “70 cents not only goes out of state, it ends up in the coffers of giant conglomerates that, in turn, have hedge funds and global investors as their shareholders.”

On October 10, 2011 GRU executives at public meeting admitted that under a best-case scenario the GRU-GREC biomass electricity purchase for the first full year of operation would result in GRU having to pay the out of state limited liability company GREC a $103 million, of which only $28 million would be paid out by GREC for fuel, in this case parts of trees to be burned in the GREC electricity-generating biomass incinerator.

Unless Mr. van Soesterberger has been trained in the sort of voodoo math used by carbon accounting charlatans – and I have no evidence that he has been – he accepts the same math rules that the rest of us accept. Under those rules ($28 million is what percentage of $103 million?) only 27 cents – not 70 cents – of every dollar spent on biomass fuel would go to the purchase the trees and parts of trees that make up virtually all of the biomass fuel the GREC incinerator would burn.

Assuming Mr. van Soesterberger accepts the same math rules that the rest of us accept, the question becomes where, in the case of the GRU-GREC biomass contract, where would the 27 cents of every dollar GRU ratepayers pay to GREC for trees and parts of trees actually end up?

We know – from public testimony given by GRU Assistant General Manager Ed Regan – that 30 percent of the cost of harvesting, gathering, processing and transporting trees and parts of trees to the GREC incinerator will be expended for diesel fuel used to power the harvesting and gathering equipment, processing equipment and 25 ton trucks that would make the 100,000 trips to and from the GREC incinerator each year. Using GRU executives’ own representations, and using the math rules we all accept, we know that of the 27 cents of every dollar GRU customers would pay for biomass fuel, 8.1 percent would go to diesel fuel and 18.9 percent would go to those who would sell trees and parts of trees to GREC to be burned in the biomass incinerator.

Who are these tree and tree part providers who will receive the $19.5 million (18.9 percent of the $103 million GRU customers will have to pay for “biomass fuel”)?

We know from news releases and public statements by GRU executives that the largest category of wood and wood parts to be burned in the incinerator will come from trees and parts of trees cut down and out during forest harvesting and forest thinning operations. The only forest harvesting contract that has been announced has been a contract with the multi-national Real Estate Investment Trust Rayonier Corporation, whose forest holdings include about 200,000 acres between of land that the Rayonier multi-national intends to convert to real estate development, most of which real estate development land falls within the GREC “catchment” area from which almost all of the tree and parts of trees to be burned in the GREC incinerator will be gathered. We also know from Rayonier’s SEC filings that less than 1 percent of Rayonier’s land holdings are in Alachua County.

We don’t know the exact terms of the Rayonier contract to sell trees and parts of trees to GREC because, according to GRU executives, the contract between Rayonier and GREC is a “trade secret” that even GRU and city officials have never seen the GREC-Rayonier contract. But we do know that whatever the terms of the GREC-Rayonier contract, only a small percentage of the money GRU ratepayer money handed over to GREC will go to the purchase of fuel from Alachua County suppliers because (1) there are no oil wells in Alachua County and no diesel fuel refining facilities in Alachua County; and (2) more than 99 percent of Rayonier’s lands are outside of Alachua County.

Where does that leave us? Not with exact numbers, which GRU executives and their aiders and abettors on the city commission see no reason for the public to have this information.

But it leaves us with an understanding of why GRU executives and their aiders and abettors on the city commission never purport to represent how much economic benefit the GRU-GREC biomass deal would allegedly provide to Gainesville and Alachua County, but, instead, insist on telling us vaguely that there will be economic benefits to the “area,” which, given the extent of the “area” from which GREC expects to gather trees and parts of trees for incineration, includes south Georgia and 23 Florida counties other than Alachua County.

The game is almost up for GRU executives, their supporters on the city commission, and their ever-diminishing handful of cohorts off the commission, such as Mr. van Soesterberger and the usual suspects on the GRU-GREC-deal-at-any-cost rapid response team.

But don’t expect them to go quietly. Watch this space for the usual suspects rapid-response team to swoop down with ever more desperate threats and attacks. Watch what happens in waning days of the Gainesville City Commission election as the end game nears. If that watch becomes too depressing, feel free to go to my website to keep up with the efforts of brave Gainesville citizens who are unafraid to speak truth to power and support my campaign to change the City Commission majority and rescue our community from the corrupting influence of the GRU-GREC contract.

Go to — www.voteraywashington.com.

And go to the polls on January 31, and encourage your friends and family to go to the polls. Let your voice be heard!

Today I heard Debbie Martinez making the exact same statement on 99.5 FM during Talk of the Town (noon to 1pm weekdays).

To be fair, every candidate in the at-large race except one, former commissioner Lauren Poe, is against the biomass plant. This is what happens when the city tries to hustle this plan past the people they are supposed to represent.

I am creating a video for each of the candidates in which I ask one question. These are the ones I have been able to corner so far. I will try to get the others this week.