Riding the Rails or ‘Mixed Signals?’

Yesterday, Gulf Breeze City Manager Buzz Eddy complained of receiving mixed signals from Pensacola officials regarding an ongoing natural gas franchise dispute. Apparently, Gulf Breeze Mayor Beverly Zimmern followed up with a letter today expressing concern about the issue.

“Recently, like an hour or two ago,” Jim Messer, Pensacola’s attorney, said this afternoon. “They were all uptight about the agenda item.”

Slated on the agenda for Pensacola City Council’s Committee of the Whole meeting on Monday is the consideration of a resolution that would allow Messer to take the natural gas franchise dispute before a judge. Currently, the two entities are engaged in a mandated conflict resolution process.

“There are no mixed signals,” Messer said today, referring to the notion as “nonsense.”

Gulf Breeze recently laid pipes to Pensacola Beach and, for the past few weeks, has been providing natural gas to the beach. The city of Pensacola—which has exclusive natural gas franchise rights to the entirety of Escambia County—balked and challenged Gulf Breeze.

Escambia County officials, meanwhile, granted Gulf Breeze franchise rights to the beach. The county officials stipulated that Pensacola could step in and reclaim its franchise rights an any point, given it provided service to the beach.

Escambia County Administrator Randy Oliver said that the county’s primary concern was for the citizens of Pensacola Beach. He didn’t see a problem with Gulf Breeze providing the service if Pensacola had chosen not to.

“If you aren’t providing the service anyway, what have you lost?” Oliver asked.

Last month, a meeting was hosted between the city of Pensacola, Gulf Breeze and Escambia County. Officials sat down to discuss the disagreement.

“I didn’t think any progress was made at that meeting,” Eddy said.

During the meeting, Gulf Breeze Attorney Matt Dannheisser said that the meeting would need to be rescheduled because Messer had not attended a previous process-mandated appointment. Messer disagreed.

Escambia County Commissioner Kevin White threw it to the county attorney, who sided with Gulf Breeze. Messer then said the matter would be better handled in court, before Pensacola City Council President Sam Hall brought the gathering to an abrupt adjournment.

After that meeting a second meeting was held. This meeting was between Gulf Breeze officials, some representatives from Pensacola—including Hall—and a natural gas franchise expert the city flew into town. Messer did not attend.

“I felt like a lot of progress was made at that meeting,” Eddy said. “I felt like the issues were boiled down pretty well.”

The Gulf Breeze city manager said that’s why he was surprised to see the agenda item for Monday’s meeting.

“It’s difficult to focus on offense and defense,” he said.

Messer doesn’t see the point of confusion. He sees a “railroad track analogy.”
“The best way I can think about it is a railroad track,” Messer said. “What happens on one rail doesn’t effect what happens on the other rail.”

According to Pensacola’s attorney, it is necessary to lay the groundwork for legal proceeding while, at the same time, attempting to reach an amiable agreement outside the courtroom.

Messer said his original intent in requesting to move the show before a judge was so that he could file an injunction against Gulf Breeze. He said that because Gulf Breeze had already begun providing service, the injunction possibility was not likely.

“Gulf Breeze has already turned the gas on, so that’s a moot point,” Messer said. “Once the gas is on the judge is not gonna turn it off—but now it’s on the agenda and I can’t get it off.”

The attorney told Pensacola City Council members last month that he wished to fast-forward into legal proceedings because he didn’t think the conflict resolution process was  producing any results. He said today that he did not discuss his exact injunction strategy with the council during its meetings because it would have revealed the strategy to Gulf Breeze officials—“If I talk in public I might as well just call Dannhiesser up and show him my hand of cards.”—and he didn’t meet with council members privately on the matter due to Sunshine Law issues.

“You see, there’s too many moving parts to this thing,” Messer said.

The attorney said that he had invited the gas franchise expert to town in order to pursue the conflict resolution path, while he concentrated on taking the issue to court. Messer said he felt like the respective attorneys may have been hampering negotiations.

“I felt that the negotiations between Dannheisser and I were being affected by our respective personalities,” he said.

Messer said that he felt the city council would grant him the needed permission to proceed with legal action.

“I believe they of course are going to agree to do that,” the attorney said, minimizing Monday’s agenda item. “So, really, council has no action to take Monday other than to be aware of what’s going on—it’s more of an informational item for them.”