City votes 30 year franchise for Florida Power & LIght

Without waiting for JOHN REGAN's telephone calls from FPL to be returned (asking for information essential to the City's vote), Commissioners voted Monday night to grant monopolistic nuclear power utility Florida Power & Light an undeserved 30 year franchise, during which the City agrees not to go into the utility business and draws money like blood from our people and businesses through "franchise fees" equal to six percent of the monopolitic nuclear electric utility's bills.

FPL said its terms were "nonnegotiable." It would not agree to a longer or shorter franchise with varying terms.

Our City officials go all soft and squishy (as does the St. Augustine WReckord) whenever deals with powerful institutions are involved. That's because they're uninformed dull Republicans lacking in ingenuity and intellect.

St. Augustine has majority Democratic registration. Most St. Augustinians are sensible people and we see right through their dumb 'ole 30 year franchise deal with a nuclear power company that has very few African-American employees locally, habitually discriminates against whistleblowers (as in the Diaz-Robainas case), mistreats customers too often, and is slow to restore power to low-income and African-American neighborhoods after hurricanes (taking up to two weeks to restore power to Flagler Estates and parts of Lincolnville).

These concerns weren't resolved.

Nor were valid questions about the urgency of joining Jacksonville, Gainesville, Clay County, Orlando, Tallahassee and other localities in having our own power company, instead of pumping our money to plutocrats in NYC and Miami every month.

So every time you pay your FPL bill (as I'm fixin' to do), remember WILLIAM B. HARRISS, City Manager; JOSEPH LEROY BOLES, JR., Mayor; ERROL JONES (a/k/a ERRONEOUS JONES), Vice Mayor (or Mayor in Charge of Vice) DONALD CRICHLOW, ex-Vice Mayor; and Commissioners NANCE SIKES-KLINE and LEEANA FREEMAN.

Call them Commissioner Six Percent. That's how much of your bill you'll be sending to them and their minions. That's how much of their brain capacity they use whenever a plutocrat comes before the City Commission wanting something.

Perhaps they'll devote a few more watts of intellectual energy to average working people's problems in the city in the future, instead of being lapdogs and lickspittles for the likes of monopolists like FPL.