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© St. Petersburg Times, published November 26, 2001
Florida Power has walked away from a spat over whether Orlando's municipal utility is as reliable as it claims.
The dispute was part of a bigger fight over which company will supply power to the leafy Orlando suburb of Winter Park, where the city council voted in June not to renew its 30-year contract with Florida Power.
Florida Power customers there complain that the power goes out way too often. The average customer loses power about 150 minutes a year, 50 percent more than the average across Florida Power's entire service area.
The Orlando Utilities Commission is competing to take over service to nearly 13,000 customers in Winter Park and has been making hay on the issue.
In a proposal to Winter Park, the utility pointed out that its average annual outages total 35 minutes. The utility is so proud of the statistic that it adopted the slogan "OUC -- The Reliable One." The phase is in OUC's logo and employees use it answering their phones.
Some Florida Power officials challenged how the rival utility calculated the reliability numbers. Lawyers for the company slapped OUC with an extensive public records request in August and copied 2,359 pages of documents, OUC spokesman Paul Dillion said.
That prompted OUC general manager Robert Haven to pen a "Dear Bill" letter to Florida Power president William Habermeyer.
Haven wrote that some people at OUC considered the request "harassment by public records." He suggested both utilities hire an outside auditor to compare reliability records. Florida Power dropped the issue, spokesman Craig Eicher said.
"Bill Habermeyer said this is not a central part of the (Winter Park) issue," he said. "We're concentrating on improving customer service, not finding fault with another company. That's not how we play this game."