By Juliana A. Torres
Staff Writer

Several proposed reforms to the Kissimmee Utility Authority's charter caused heated discussions during the Kissimmee Commission meeting Tuesday.

The most contentious amendment, one initially proposed by Commisisoner Art Otero that would required Kissimmee commissioners to interview KUA board applicants and choose board members directly, failed in a 3-2 vote. KUA board member candidates will continue to be interviewed by the current board to make a recommendation to the Kissimmee Commission, which can choose to accept or reject the nomination.

Otero said his proposal would put the direct control of the KUA board in the hands of elected officials.

KUA Board Member George Gant, a former Kissimmee mayor who was honored belatedly Tuesday for his service to the city, was the first to speak on the issue.

“Actually, I was sitting where you were when this all started 25 years ago,” Gant said, referring to one of his previous terms on the Kissimmee Commission and arguing for the current leaders to vote against reforming the selection process. “I don't really think it's broke. I don't understand totally why you want to change it. I'd encourage you not to do that. There were reasons we set it up.”

Resident Reuben De Jesus said not passing the reform would be “a disservice to the KUA customers.”

“Who do you go to other than the board, because they police themselves?” De Jesus said, arguing that making the commissioners directly re-sponsible for selecting board members would bring more accountability within the board. “If I have a problem with KUA, now I (could) go to public officials.”

Otero said he was “disappointed” that the reform he proposed as an attempt to depoliticize the issue was having the opposite effect, pointing out that several KUA board members showed up at the meeting to speak on the issue.

“I would say that the system is broken,” he said. “It's being controlled by a network of people and that's it.”

Mayor Jim Swan said the most dramatic and positive change in Kissimmee's electricity history came when politicians were taken out of the process, when KUA was first created.

“(Today) we have power in our homes, almost completely uninterrupted,” he said. “It used to be, every day for years, there was a blackout.”

Swan also said that as a nonvoting member of the KUA board, he had heard very few complaints and even fewer residents come to the KUA meetings to complain about how the authority is run.

Otero and fellow Commissoner Jerry Gemskie were the only two commissioners to vote for the proposed charter amendment, which required a 4-1 vote. Gemskie told the News-Gazette he voted for the proposal because Toho Water Authority, which is set up very similar to KUA, changed its board selection to give city commissioners direct selection control five years ago.

Commissioner Cheryl Grieb proposed a change to the residency requirement for the board, which currently requires at least four of the five members to be city residents. Only about half of KUA customers currently are city residents, KUA President Jim Welsh told the commission. Decreasing the requirement so that only two of the board members have to be city residents would better reflect that demographic change, as well as open up the pool of new applicants for the board, Grieb said.

A motion to advertise an ordinance suggesting the residency change passed unanimously.

Gemskie proposed two other reforms to the KUA board: first, that a simple majority instead of a four-fifths majority be required to change the KUA charter and second, that the board hire an attorney to represent it separately from the attorney hired to represent the utility authority itself. Commissioners agreed to draft a letter to the KUA board recommending the consideration of the additional attorney, should the cost increase be feasible in the KUA budget.

Aside from the proposed reforms, Otero questioned the financial practices of the utility authority.

“Let's talk about management. They have credit cards, spending money, left and right, with those credit cards. We're talking about paying for mileage for them when they're going to places for events,” he said. “That's our taxpayers’ money. If we here in the city of Kissimmee make changes in reference to our budget, it should be done the same way in KUA.”

He requested a statement of how KUA is meeting its financial estimates for the year be presented to the Kissimmee city manager on a monthly basis, rather than a quarterly one as he receives currently.

He also questioned a current policy that requires a KUA customer who has had his or her electricity cut off more than twice in a year to post a two-month deposit with KUA.

“Do you think that that's fair, for someone to make a payment like that?” he asked the KUA president.

Welsh said it was a matter of balancing what's fair to KUA customers struggling to make payments and what's fair to customers who are up-to-date with their monthly bills and who bear the cost of the bad debt KUA incurs when other customers aren't paying. He said the policy was decided by the board, pointing out that any extra revenue KUA makes goes back to the city in an annual transfer, not to any stockholders.

“We report to our rate payers, our customers. It's our business to try to serve our customers in any way that we can,” he said. “We're not running out of money, (but our) bad debts are going up.”

At Otero's request, the KUA board will review the policy.