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.