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.
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.
So, are they mistaken, or did they lie? Considering that the city commission stupidly let GREC remove our escape clause from the contract, it is not hard to imagine this sort of gross incompetence from other parts of our city government. But I am going with “they lied.”
Just before Christmas, GRU officials, operating with the tacit or explicit approval of most members of the Gainesville City Commission, called out the police to threaten with arrest and jail an earnest young African American man named Steve Clark, who has collected hundreds of signatures from GRU ratepayers opposed to the coming GRU-GREC biomass electric rate hikes.
Mr. Clark’s alleged crime? Attempting to engage his fellow Gainesville residents and GRU ratepayers in the political process to give voice to their opposition to the more than $3 billion GRU-GREC deal, the burden for which will fall disproportionately on District 1 electric users, and on businesses.
As can be seen in the video that was recording during the City-sanctioned assault on Mr. Clark’s free speech rights, GRU Security Chief David Thompson had police summon Mr. Clark away from his conversation with another African American GRU ratepayer — a senior citizen named Eloise Bowman — who, along with granddaughter, was attempting to use the public space to share their views about the GRU-GREC biomass deal.
As can be seen in the video. Mr. Clark was taken away from his conversation with Mrs. Bowman and her granddaughter for the sole purpose of accommodating GRU Security Chief Mr. Thompson, surrounded by three armed police officers, in issuing Mr. Clark a criminal trespass warning, the violation of which, Mr. Clark was threatened, would have him “sitting out on Northeast 39th Avenue” (the Alachua County jail).
On the video, one can hear Mrs. Bowman, after Mr. Clark is taken away from his conversation with her, stating — with more intelligence, clarity and common sense than has been exhibited by most members of the Gainesville City Commission in their lockstep support of the financially irresponsible GRU-GREC deal — delivering the message that most commissioners and GRU officials acting in concert with them seem desperate to suppress at any cost to the rights and expectations of citizens of this community:
“It’s not fair from them to try to make us pay for this new plant they’re putting up. We’re not responsible for them putting up the new plant.”
Who will stand up for the people of District 1 to make sure their common sense pleas are not silenced?
I respectfully suggest that this is the more than $3 billion question in the District 1 City Commission race, and the question that most separates me from my opponents. Neither of the two other candidates for the District 1 City Commission seat has uttered a word of support for Mr. Clark or Mrs. Bowman, or offered any protest against the violation of Mr. Clark’s civil rights.
Why not?
The answer to this most important question is known only to my two campaign opponents, who are actively supported in their city commission electoral campaigns by a majority of members of the city commission — the most ardent supporters of the GRU-GREC biomass deal at any cost, Mayor Lowe, and Commissioners Bottcher, Hawkins and Henry. Meanwhile,
I have condemned what happened to Mr. Clark and Mrs. Bowman and her granddaughter, have offered support for their cause, and have rolled up my sleeves and drafted a legal memorandum that I sent to Gainesville Police Department Chief Tony Jones, GPD legal advisor Ron Combs, and City Attorney Marion Radison explaining why I believe their civil rights have been violated.
Whatever my opponents’ virtues – and they do have virtues – among them does not seem to be a willingness to take a stand against the powers that be on the city commission in order to protect and defend the beleaguered people of Gainesville when the people need it most.
I believe most District 1 voters do not want to elect a new commissioner wedded to toeing the current commission’s line at the expense of the rights of the citizens of District 1.
