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32 municipal utilities based on current rates - that is, the City's Residential rate would be 8th lowest of the 33 Florida municipal utilities. Current information on the rates charged by Florida's cooperatives is not readily available, but at $113.93 per 1,000 kWh, the City's rate would be lower than all but one of Florida's electric cooperatives, based on their rates in effect as of December 31, 2012. (This is the most current information generally available, from the Florida Public Service Commission's report, Statistics of the Florida Electric Utility Industry, 2012. The 2013 edition of this publication is not yet available.) Potential Additional Rate Reduction Measures I have also attached a table showing potential additional rate reduction measures that the City may be able to implement, including potential savings amounts and timing of such measures. Regarding retirement of the Vero Beach Power Plant, it is possible that there will be additional savings from the retirement in that the City would likely have to invest additional capital in the Plant to keep it running; however, these savings would be in comparison to the costs that the City would otherwise incur, so the result is that rates would likely be lower than they would otherwise have been if the Power Plant were to continue in operation, but we cannot say with certainty that the retirement would actually lower rates from current levels. Regarding the option of financing Transmission & Distribution capital spending with debt, there are potential annual cost and rate reductions available from doing so. In simple arithmetic terms, replacing $3 million of capital spending in a year with a year's worth of debt service (on the order of $225,000-$250,000 per year), would reduce the Electric Utility's required revenues by about $2.7 million per year. One concept is that the City might pursue this course for 2-4 years, with a view toward returning to the current practice of financing T&D capital spending from current revenues in 2018 or 2019, when it is hoped that the debt service costs associated with the Stanton Project will be eliminated upon retirement of the existing Stanton Project debt. Those bonds are scheduled to be retired no later than October 1, 2019, and when we asked OUC whether they plan to undertake any significant capital spending measures on the Stanton Unit 1 Plant, they indicated that they do not. The Stanton Project debt service runs about $8.7 million a year on average, and the City's share is 32.521 percent, or about $2.8 million per year. However, you and the City Council should note that both the City's Finance Commission and Utility Commission have recommended 4