Alachua Voter Guide

MORE OF THE SAME — BUT THE BALL WON’T STAY HIDDEN.

The readers of The Gainesville Sun have been served another heaping pile of nonsense by Gainesville city-commission-front-man Rob Brinkman, (“More drilling won’t lower the rising price of gasoline, April 9, 2012).

In this latest Alice in Wonderland tale Brinkman admits that:

1. In 2005 imported foreign oil accounted for more than half of the US oil supply.

2. Today, a few short years later, imported foreign oil accounts for less than half of the US oil supply.

You would think that Brinkman would applaud this change that has reversed a situation in which the US imported 33 percent more foreign oil in 2005 than it does today. Surely Brinkman means to applaud this significant decrease in U.S. reliance on imported foreign oil, right?

Of course not.

Brinkman’s proposed solution is to immediately slap a fee of at least 10 cents on every gallon of gasoline and diesel fuel, and increase that fee by another 10 cents every year presumably forever.

“Rather than subsidizing fossil fuels, as we currently do, a fee should be leveled at the mine, well head or port of entry,” Brinkman proposes.

As illogical as Brinkman’s reasoning appears at first glance, it will come as no surprise to those who have listened to him make citizen comments at Gainesville City Commission meetings where he plays Greek Chorus to wood-burning-incinerator-at-any-cost commissioner heroes like Mayor Craig Lowe and Commissioner Susan Bottcher, and their allies.

This crowd unabashedly appears to believe that perverting the free market system to penalize fossil fuels and favor the wood burning schemes will hide the ball of the wood burning electric generator disaster of their own making. They appear to believe that they can fool the Gainesville public by raising the price of fossil- fuel-generated electricity so high that the excessive wood burning rate hikes will seem less extreme.

Unfortunately, for them, it can’t work.

In this month’s edition of “North Central Florida Business Report” their tree burner ally, Josh Levine, project developer for GREC, let the cat out of the bag:

“Transportation costs, which make up 30 to 40 percent of the biomass fuel costs, will be affected by the price of diesel.” And these diesel fuel influenced costs will be passed directly along to the GRU customer. Huge percentages of the biomass fuel costs will come from the cost of diesel truck transportation. Even more diesel fuel costs will come from huge diesel-powered equipment like feller-bunchers used for harvesting and thinning trees. Even more and diesel powered wood chipping machines will suck down even more imported oil.

If the Lowe-Brinkman-Bottcher dream of driving up the price of diesel fuel takes hold, the majority of the cost GRU customers will pay for wood to be burned in the incinerator will be paid less and less to regional forestors and more and more to foreign fossil fuel merchants.

Will the Lowe-Brinkman-Bottcher sleight of hand, as amateurish as it is, fool enough of the people, enough of the time?

Not if the years-long information lock down ceases to hold.

Many members of the public are now aware that the irregularly negotiated GREC wood burning contract will cost ratepayers at least $103 million per year for 100 megawatts of electricity until 2034 — the year the Deerhaven II coal plant is likely to be decommissioned.

They also know now know that at current market prices the city – if it could figure a way to remove the GREC albatross of the wood-burning-incinerator from around the neck of its citizens — could enter into a 20 year contract for 100 megawatts of electricity produced by clean natural guaranteed cost of less than $72 million per year, as opposed to the possibly ever escalating $103 million per year wood-burning GREC contract.

And they know that that $620 million in savings over 20 years could go a long way to rebuilding the city’s damaged infrastructure, while providing millions of dollars in rebates and business incentives to citizens and entrepreneurs.

The knowledge is there, and will spread.

But d o not underestimate the lengths – and increasingly absurd arguments — to which the Lowe-Brinkman-Bottcher daisy chainers will go to keep the public fooled, and to keep the courts from delving into the Sunshine Law violations that brought our community to this unnecessary fiscal precipice.

In the last couple of weeks different Gainesville citizens, with different political orientations, have expressed concerns about the Gainesville Mayor Craig Lowe’s support for the city’s non-competitive hiring and retention, with benefits, of his former campaign manager.

These citizens have expressed what seem to be five distinct concerns:

First, there are those citizens, some of them former political supporters of Craig Lowe, who expressed concern that the city’s hiring of his former campaign manager soon after his election as mayor damaged citizen trust in city government by creating the appearance of a political payoff. According to some of these citizens, the seeming spoils system championed by Craig Lowe appears to be a renunciation of reforms that the Progressive movement brought forth long ago in order to reduce corruption in municipal government.

Second, there are those citizens, some of them former political supporters of Craig Lowe, who expressed concern that the hiring of a mayoral aide, with special responsibility to the mayor, represented a significant change in policy for a city governed under what political scientists call a “weak mayor” structure in which the mayor is supposed to have no greater policy role than any other city commissioner. According to some of these citizens, Craig Lowe championed of the creation of the job of full time paid “mayoral aide” and in so doing undermined the structure upon which Gainesville’s city government has been built.

Third, there are those citizens, some of them former political supporters of Craig Lowe, who expressed concern that the city’s hiring of his campaign manager for any city job without a competitive hiring process was unfair to highly qualified minority applicants who never had the chance to compete for the job. According to some of these citizens, the non-competitive hiring process championed by Craig Lowe is a reminder of the days when people of color were systematically excluded from competition for city jobs.

Fourth, there are those citizens, some of them former political supporters of Craig Lowe, who expressed concern that he had led them and the public to believe that the new non-competitive mayoral research position would be temporary and without benefits. These include citizens who, upon learning more than 20 months ago about the city’s hiring of his former campaign manager, had given the newly-elected mayor a pass based on his assurance that the job his campaign manager was hired for urgent and critical research claimed to be urgently needed – particularly related to the Cabot-Koppers Superfund remediation program and the city’s solar feed-in tariff program. According to some of these citizens, Craig Lowe, without informing them, or the public, championed his assistant’s abandonment of these research projects in favor of more politically oriented work that would be of greater benefit to the mayor in his announced reelection campaign.

Fifth, there are those citizens, some of them former supporters of Craig Lowe, who expressed concern that, behind the scenes, and out-of-the-Sunshine, he maneuvered to assure that mayoral aide position would not be competitively filled. According to some of these citizens, Craig Lowe, behind the scenes, championed the revision of the city’s policy manual to thwart the expressed will of the city commission that the mayoral aide position be competitively filled.

Craig Lowe in his Gainesville Sun opinion article (“As Gainesville grows up, so do city staff needs,” March 11, 2011) for the most part ignores these citizens’ expressed concerns, and uses most of his allotted words to recite what he appears to believe to be his most important accomplishments as mayor, presumably unachievable without the assistance of his mayoral aide.

He then ends his opinion article with a promise “to make the mayor’s office more responsive to the needs of citizens.”

Taking Craig Lowe at his word, on behalf of many Gainesville citizens who have sought my counsel about how to address their concerns to their mayor, I send this brief open letter asking Craig Lowe to clarify two assertions contained in his opinion article:

Mr. Mayor:

1. Do you claim that the mayors of Tallahassee, Miami Beach and Chapel Hill – as you imply by citing these examples – all have mayoral aides whose job descriptions did not exist before the election of those mayors and all of whose mayoral aide jobs were non-competitively filled with former campaign managers for those mayors?

2. Will you share the names of the multiple other mayors of other cities that you assert each expressed, with bafflement, “Why would they want to hold your city back?” in response to your complaints that Gainesville’s strange citizens have expressed their varied concerns about Gainesville’s non-competitive hiring and retention of your former campaign manager as your taxpayer-funded personal aide?

I ask that you yourself – and not your mayoral aide – answer these questions.

Ray Washington

The day after the January 31 city commission general election, I wrote the following words, a version of which appeared on this blog, and a version of which was published by The Gainesville Sun:

“The city commission conductors’ handpicked At-Large candidate, Lauren Poe, is headed for a runoff with former Florida Public Service Commissioner Nathan Skop in part because of internecine political infighting and in part because of the city commissioner conductors’ disreputable whispering smear campaign against candidate Skop. These attempted smears, in my opinion, will become nastier and more outrageous in the Poe-Skop runoff. The stakes are that high. Biomass-rate-hike-at-any-cost commissioners are desperate to end all discussion of the irregularly negotiated more than $3 billion biomass contract the city commission approved in violation of the Florida Sunshine Law.”

The accuracy of my prediction is no cause for celebration. That sitting Gaineville City Commissioners — with the help of Gainesville Sun collaborationists whose days of employment at Hallifax Media Group may be numbered — behaved in the runoff just as their past behavior indicated they would behave, was disheartening to experience, despite its inevitability.

Whatever the outcome of tomorrow’s runoff election — and the outcome is far from clear — the long, sad unraveling of the GRU-GREC biomass disaster will continue apace.

The details of the biomass unraveling — partly political and partly legal — may vary a bit, depending upon the outcome of tomorrow’s election, but, ultimately, the inevitable GRU-GREC disaster, in one form or another, will play out, and the injury and scarring of this community we have chosen as our home will be a long time healing.

Nathan Skop is running for the At Large 1 seat of the Gainesville City Commission with a commitment to protect our community from the more than $3 billion biomass contract disaster of the commission’s own making.

If Nathan Skop is elected in the February 28, 2012 city runoff election, my understanding is that as a first order of business he would require GRU General Manager Robert Hunzinger to provide information about what construction has been completed at the GREC biomass site, and at what cost. In addition, it is my understanding that he would require GRU General Manager Robert Hunzinger to provide information about whether the infrastructure that has been put in place by GREC could be used, or could be adapted to, a less expensive form of electric power generation. It is my understanding that with the above information in hand he would seek the cooperation of other commissioners for a renegotiation of the GRU-GREC contract under terms that would favor the ratepayers of this community.

Commissioners can at long last stand up for ratepayers, or not. But make no mistake – if Nathan Skops’ efforts are rebuffed by GRU-GREC-biomass-plant-at-any-cost-to-ratepayers commissioners who remain committed to forcing the financially irresponsible GRU-GREC biomass disaster of the commission’s own making down ratepayer throats, there is a “death penalty” option.

Based on information that has come to light since previously secret portions of the GRU-GREC biomass contract were made public on April 6, 2011, the contract may be found by a court to be void on several bases:

1. GRU General Manager Robert Hunzinger, contrary to May 12, 2008 city commission instructions that he himself negotiate the GRU-GREC Contract, instead appointed an ad hoc committee, headed by GRU Assistant General Managers Ed Regan and John Stanton, whose meetings were required to have been noticed and opened to the public but were not;

2. Hunzinger, Regan, Stanton and others “daisy-chained” information between the Mayor and individual commissioners by GRU officials before the commission’s May 7, 2009 vote; and

3. The city commission on May 7, 2009 approved a contract differs substantially from the contract the commission authorized in a public meeting on May 12, 2008. Changed terms of the contract were not publicly noticed or discussed before the commission approved them.

These and other Sunshine Law violation, if established in court, provide bases on which a judge would be required to rule that the GRU-GREC contract is void and without legal effect.

The significance of all this is that if a court now determines the GRU-GREC contract is void, there is no contract to break. Should GREC file suit against GRU and/or the City of Gainesville to attempt to recover damages, no damages may be awarded to the extent GREC was on notice that its contract with GRU was in violation of the Sunshine Law but chose to proceed with construction at its own risk.

If politics is indeed the art of the possible, in the District 1 campaign we did what was possible.

In two months of last minute campaigning vs. six and eight months of campaigning by two opponents in a district with a difficult demographic divide we needed more time to unite — what was possible for us was to bring into better focus the looming GRU-GREC biomass electric rate hike disaster.

After two and a half years of trying to pretend this bad decision never happened, biomass-at-any-cost-to-ratepayers city commissioners — in an effort to keep biomass rationalists off the city commission — went public and on the record leaving  a paper trail of attempted obfuscations and specious justifications that, in the fullness of time, will show  who is responsible and who should be held accountable.

This was what was reasonably possible to achieve in the District 1 race, and we achieved it.

Now that the general election has resolved itself in the manner in which it has been resolved, the insular Gainesville City Commission majority is conducting a runaway train headed for a crash of historic proportion — assuming the GRU-GREC biomass contract is not reformed or cancelled, which they seem hell bent on preventing.

These would-be conductors in the election just passed began what appeared to be the first stages of an orchestrated campaign to smear candidates who would speak truth to power.

For me, that incipient smear campaign is yesterday’s news, and largely irrelevant. The District 1 race yesterday was decided in favor of the conductors’ handpicked candidate Yvonne Hinson-Rawls.  The result, in my opinion, was not substantially affected by the inept City Commissioner Susan Bottcher led smear campaign against me. The result — a second place finish, a 78-vote swing from a runoff — was, in my opinion, the legacy of  a District 1 demographic divide that there was insufficient time  for us to bridge.

It was a different story in the At-Large city commission race that was not decided yesterday. In that race, largely because of political machinations, the city commission conductors’ handpicked At-Large candidate, Lauren Poe, is headed for a runoff with former Florida Public Service Commissioner Nathan Skop. In that race the city commissioner conductors’ disreputable smear campaign against candidate Skop appears likely to become nastier and more outrageous.

It is what it is.  But what goes around comes around, in politics as in life. The worm will turn.

My wife has brought to my attention the following assertions by City Commissioner Susan Bottcher.  Bottcher apears to have become the current city commission majority’s group-think purveyor of misinformation and attack in a desperate attempt to influence the outcome of Tuesday’s City Commission election.  If hand-picked new commissioners can be elected, past commission actions related to the irregularly negotiated more than $3 billion GRU-GREC contract may be kept from public consciousness. Bottcher has written the following version of the “FACTS” as devoutly wished by her and those who wish to re-write GRU-GREC history and thereby continue to mislead the public.

COMMISSIONER BOTTCHER’S INCREASINGLY DESPERATE PERSONAL ATTACKS AND ATTEMPTS TO MISLEAD THE VOTERS:

“Skop and Washington apparently learned nothing in law school about contracts, the Sunshine Laws or how bond ratings work. Both these candidates are promising that, if elected, they will force the city to break the contract with the owners of GREC (biomass plant).

“FACT: The contract was not done in secret. It has been a long standing policy that negotiations with a private contractor or business are conducted between city staff and the contractor. Once terms are set the contract goes to the full commission in a public forum for ratification. This is how it was done for GREC. This is in no way a violation of the Sunshine Laws since elected officials are not involved in the negotiation process. At the May 2009 commission meeting Commissioner Braddy made the motion to ratify the GREC contract, there was no public comment against it, and it passed unanimously.

“FACT: There was never a so-called buy-out clause in the GREC contract. The idea was discussed and after careful consideration between both parties it was decided that it was in the city’s and contractor’s best interests not to insert such a clause. Claiming such a clause existed and then was surreptitiously removed is patently false.

“FACT: Breaking the contract would ruin the proud AA bond rating this city enjoys. Not only would it cost the city hundreds of thousands if not many millions of dollars to break the GREC contract, it would have a long term devastating impact on the city’s ability to borrow money for future infrastructure projects (roads, new GPD building, RTS transfer station, etc). Anyone who advocates for now going back and breaking the contract is advocating for bankrupting the City of Gainesville.

“FACT: No one commissioner can force the city to do anything. There are seven voting commissioners and any changes require a majority of at least four. Even if any anti-GREC candidates is elected, the remaining commissioners have all voiced support for GREC. Even Commissioner Chase was quoted at two commission meetings last fall saying he is “committed to making GREC successful” and is “not interested in getting out of the contract.’”

RESPONSE TO COMMISSIONER BOTTCHER’S LATE ATTEMPT TO KEEP THE GRU-GREC CONTRACT SKELETON’S HIDDEN FROM THE PUBLIC:

FACT: Terms of the GRU-GREC biomass contract were secretly communicated to members of the Gainesville City Commission but not to the public. Gainesville City Commissioners and those who negotiated the GRU-GREC contract conspired to keep those ultimately responsible for paying for the cost of the GRU-GREC biomass project — GRU’s rate payers — from knowing how much the project was going to cost. Individual city commissioners also knew that the GRU-GREC biomass contract contained a provision under which details of the contract would be kept secret from the public until at least 2043. Aside from the breach of trust with the community that is inherent in these backroom dealings, what these commissioners did was to violate the Florid Government in the Sunshine Law. It has been admitted by the Mayor on the public record that he knew that the other commissioners knew key details of the project when they voted on it. The Mayor’s knowledge of what other commissioners knew is evidence of information Daisy Chaining, which is prohibited by the Florida Government in the Sunshine Law. As a result of these actions taken by commissioners in violation of the Sunshine Law, the GRU-GREC contract is void as a matter of law.

FACT: The negotiation of the GRU-GREC contract with the private contractor GREC’s predecessor in interest, Nacogdoches Power LLC, was authorized by the city commission in May 2008 to be carried out by new GRU General Manager Robert Hunzinger as a one man negotiation. A one person negotiation, under the Florida Open Meetings Law, allows negotiations to take place in secret without the need for public notice and public attendance.  Mr Hunzinger, contrary to his explicit instructions, organized a negotiating “team” headed by two co-lead-negotiators Ed Regan and John Stanton. This team-based negotiation required notice to the public and required negotiating team meetings to take place in the Sunshine.  As a result of actions taken by the negotiating team in violation of the Sunshine Law, the GRU-GREC contract is void as a matter of law.

FACT: At the May 7 2009 city commission meeting members of the Gainesville City Commission (but not Commissioner Ed Braddy, who was no longer on the city commission) — without notice to the public of the secret terms of the GRU-GREC contract, and without notice to the public that the the contract did not contain the back out clause that Commissioner Braddy and every other then commissioner by a public vote on May 12, 2008 in a public meeting required to be included in any contract executed by GRU General Manager Hunzinger — unanimously approved the GRU-GREC contract. As a result of these actions taken in violation of the Sunshine Law, the GRU-GREC contract is void as a matter of law.

FACT: A back-out or buy-out clause was specifically included in a version of the GRU-GREC contract the developer GREC had agreed to in September 2008. The clause existed and was removed, without the public being informed. Subsequently the city commission, without notice to the public, voted to ratify a version of the contract signed by General Manager Hunzinger. As a result of these actions taken in violation of the Sunshine Law, the GRU-GREC contract is void as a matter of law.

FACT: The action of the city commission in violating the Sunshine Law and then attempting to proceed with a void contract may threaten GRU’s and the city’s AA bond ratings. But while the city commission’s actions in entering into a contract void as a matter of law may threaten GRU’s and the city’s AA bond ratings, the “breaking” of a bad contract
through the legal process historically has not harmed GRU’s or the city’s bond ratings. The city on at least three occasions since the construction of the DeerHaven Generating Station has “broken” bad contracts when the public interest has required it, and neither the city’s nor GRU’s bond ratings have suffered as a result.

FACT: One or more commissioners’ bringing to light deficient negotiating and actions taken by the city not in the public interest can and has changed bad decisions made by the majority of the city commission. In December 2011 there were five commissioners, including Bottcher, who supported a scheme for the installing red light cameras at four intersections in the city under a contract that would have harmed citizens without substantial benefit to the community and a cost of more than $12 million to the citizens. Two city commissioners, with the assistance of members of the public, were able to demonstrate the folly of the Bottcher’s majority reasoning. As a result Bottcher’s support for the red light camera contract was abandoned, and the red light camera contract rejected by a 7-0
commission vote. Commissioners who have all voiced support for a contract can and do change their minds when held to account by other commissioners and the public.

The $64,000 question is:

How much more sheer nonsense and personal attack against independent-minded candidates will Bottcher spew forth in her continued attempts to influence the outcome of Tuesday’s election?

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.

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!

In another section of this forum I was asked what I would do, if elected to the City Commission, to get out of the GRU-GREC contact. Below is my answer, which I have provided in other places and at other times, but which I may never have provided in quite this form.

1. I would attempt to secure three other votes on the commission to require GRU officials to immediately provide information to the commission as to what construction has been completed at the GREC site and at what cost, and approve an independent report as to whether the initial infrastructure that has been put in thus far (presumably piping, electrical connections and reinforced foundations) could be used, or could be adapted to, some much less expensive and much less locally environmentally deleterious form of electric power generation. (As one example: A 100 MW combine cycle natural gas plant could be built at less than half the cost of the biomass plant, could be operated and maintained at far less than the cost of operating and maintaining the biomass plant, and, at current natural gas prices, could be fueled at less than the cost of extracting wood products from area forests. As to local environmental impacts, a combined cycle natural gas plant would draw only about one quarter the water needed by the biomass plant, would use fuel brought in by existing natural gas pipeline rather than requiring, as would the biomass plant, about 50,000 annual heavy diesel truck trips — 100,000 counting trucks coming and going; would emit only a fraction of the carbon that would be emitted by the biomass plant gas plant; and would emit almost no particulate matter of the sort that would be emitted by the biomass plant, and as has been condemned as damaging to human health by numerous independent medical groups and officials, including the president of the Florida Medical Society whose warnings were in large part responsible for stopping the construction of a biomass plant in Tallahassee and in the nearby African American Community.)

2. I would attempt to secure the cooperation of at least three other commissioners to approve a buy out of the GRU-GREC contract under terms that would favor the ratepayers of this community, with the upfront knowledge as to what use, if any, GRU might later be able to make of the initial infrastructure that has been laid down by GREC thus far. (We know that the major construction has not yet begun, but, thus far, no information has been provided to the pubic as to what construction has been completed, and at what cost).

3. I would support the filing of a lawsuit seeking a declaratory judgment as to whether the GRU-GREC contract is in fact, as it appears to be, void ab initio as a result of having been entered into in violation of the Florida Open Meetings Law. (There are several Sunshine law violations that individual commissioners have already acknowledged having occurred, including (a) the commission’s 2009 approval of the GRU-GREC contract that differed substantially from the 2008 commission negotiation authorization, without having noticed the public about some of the changes and without discussing some of those changes in a public meeting; (b) the appointment by the GRU general manager of a team headed by GRU Assistant General Managers Ed Regan and John Stanton, which team’s deliberations, crystalized and communicated privately to individual commissioners, which team meetings were required to have been noticed and opened to the public; and (c) the admitted (by the Mayor) daisy-chaining by GRU officials of information between the Mayor and individual commissioners as to what the other commissioners knew and what actions the other commissioners intended to take. There are other Sunshine Law violations that I believe have taken place and that, if established, could be separate bases on which a court could make a ruling that the GRU-GREC contract was void ab initio and thereby without force or effect, but I mentioned these three violations specifically because they have been revealed in the public record since April 6, 2011, the date on which several public spirited citizens, opposed by the majority of members of the city commission, in settlement of private litigation, finally secured the unblackening of previously hidden GRU-GREC financial details. The fact that these particular violations of the Sunshine Law were widely known — and, indeed, were part of the public record as a result of having been discussed by myself and others at post April 6 city commission meetings — has the effect of having put GREC officials on notice that the contract through which GREC expects to begin receiving its more than $3 billion payments beginning in 2013 may be a void contract. If a court determines the GRU-GREC contract to have been void ab initio, no payments would be due, unless GREC were to sue the city and seek damages as a result of city commission actions that resulted in the contract being void. But if GREC officials knew or should have known that the contract might be void, GREC officials’ ability to claim damages may be limited by the fact that GREC could have gone to court to seek a declaratory judgment as to the contract’s validity at any time before filing its notice to proceed on June 30, 2011, or any time thereafter, and by such timely action have avoided the substantial expenditure of construction funds that began to flow after June 30. GREC by its failure to take this protective action may have handed this community a great gift, resulting in the community’s extrication from the contract at little financial costs. The great cost to the community in terms of trust in government to look out for its citizens is another matter.

One side note on Florida Open Meetings Law violations: As every attorney familiar with Sunshine Law issues is aware, a contract found to be void ab initio as a result of having been approved in violation of the Open Meetings Law can have new life breathed into it by being “cured” by the body that illegally approved it — in this case the Gainesville City Commission. In order to be cured, the commission need only follow the law the second time around — properly notice a meeting at which the void contract is brought up for reconsideration, openly discuss the relevant contractual provisions in the Sunshine, and vote again to ratify the contract. GREC and its partners drawing public salaries as GRU executives so far have not sought to do this, perhaps because to do so might spook the overseas lenders who have agreed to finance the project (at junk bond rates of 14 to 15 percent interest, according to ad hoc GRU-GREC committee co-lead negotiator Ed Regan). This is a risky choice that depends for its success on the continued passivity of the Gainesville electorate. In the upcoming city election should Gainesville voters elect those candidates who have been hand picked by GRU-GREC-biomass-deal-at-any-cost city commissioners GREC investors will feel safe in having a commission that when the time comes will vote to cure and reimpose on GRU’s already-beleagured ratepayers the onerous terms of the the void GRU-GREC contract.

(In the upcoming elections GRU-GREC biomass-deal-at-any-cost commissioners Mastrodicasa, Bottcher, Henry, Hawkins and Mayor Lowe have all contributed funds they hope will ensure the election of the only three candidates who agree with their pro-biomass positions and have stated they will do nothing to disturb the GRU-GREC contract. Those three GRU-GREC-supporting candidates are: Lauren Poe, seeking the at large seat, and Yvonne Hinson-Rawls and Armando-Grundy, seeking the District 1 seat.)

Commissioners Henry and Mastrodicasa will be gone this year as a result of term limits, the result being that only three of the five above-cited GRU-GREC biomass deal at any costs commissioners will remain on the commission after this election. Should the citizens of Gainesville see fit to elect me as commissioner for District 1 and see fit to elect anyone except for Lauren Poe as the commissioner for the At Large seat, the GRU-GREC end game will have arrived.

We’ll see.