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Voters may have reacted to power plan overload

By LORRI HELFAND
Published November 10, 2005

BELLEAIR - As Tuesday's referendum approached, fancy ads overloaded Jim O'Neill's mailbox.

He did what he usually does with such items.

"When I saw something come in the mail, I threw it out. I get enough junk mail," O'Neill said.

O'Neill and his wife relied on instinct and voted against the referendum, ignoring the numerous, high-quality mailers from a political action committee that favored a proposal to let Belleair run its own electric company.

The ads touting municipalization were sent out by a well-funded PAC called Power to the People. The majority of the Town Commission backed the plan.

But 54 percent of voters at the polls rejected the proposal. Darryl Paulson, a University of South Florida professor who studies city politics, said slick campaigns can backfire. Paulson recalled a similar campaign in the mid 1980s, when a grass roots group defeated a well-organized campaign by city and business leaders to turn the St. Petersburg waterfront into a festival marketplace.

"There's suspicion and mistrust of the establishment. People are looking at this group and the money and asking themselves, "Why is this group pumping in money for this cause?' - raising questions like "What's in it for them?' " Paulson said.

Resident Don White said he thought residents were overwhelmed by messages from camps for and against the issue.

Several residents who were against the enterprise bought ads in a local newspaper, and Progress Energy initiated its own campaign to woo voters, polling residents and sending out letters promising top-rate service.

"One of the residents told me she did not understand the numbers and felt bombarded by both sides," White said.

White, who was not in favor of municipalization, said some longtime residents thought the town government had done a poor job of repairing roads and managing the infrastructure for a number of years and wondered whether Belleair could handle its own utility.

"I think they were saying, "If we can't manage the basics, how can we possibly get into an endeavor like this?'T" White said.

Proponents of the idea had held up Winter Park as an example of what Belleair could be. In that city, 69 percent of voters agreed to municipalization in 2003, making Winter Park the first city in Florida since 1943 to break with an investor-owned utility. Barry Moline, executive director of the Florida Municipal Electric Association, a trade organization for the state's 33 municipal utilities, said Progress Energy mounted a similar campaign in Winter Park.

Progress Energy's message was, "We're your trusted partner, and you don't need to change, and change can be bad," Moline said.

But in Winter Park, the City Commission took a stand early in the campaign and maintained a consistent message, in contrast to Belleair officials, many of whom stated their preference just weeks or days before the vote.

"The message was a little more muddy and a little less clear," Moline said.

Jim Harrison, who headed Power to the People, said voters rejected his PAC's vision because Progress Energy convinced people that the power business is risky.

"We went up against the fear that Progress Energy put into our elderly citizens with false and inaccurate information," he said.

Lil Cromer said Harrison's group hurt its own cause by claiming that the town could bury poles and wires for free.

"I think it insulted the intelligence of the people," Cromer said. "These guys are so arrogant. They just think everybody in town is stupid."

For some, like Tina Papavasilopoulos, the vote came down to personal concerns. She voted against the proposal because she didn't want to put power at risk.

"Most of us have found out, once we lose electricity, it's a pretty major aspect of our life," she said.

[Last modified November 10, 2005, 01:21:17]