Fire Chief Puts Firefighters
On Notice For Layoffs

28 thoughts on “Fire Chief Puts Firefighters
On Notice For Layoffs”

1. This is the best news Iv’e heard!! The only problem is they need to get rid of John Wayne to go with them!!! He sells these wolf tickets about taking ambulances of the road and closing stations, He’s full of S#@t!!!!!!!!!!!!

2. I believe the Chief is correct. He will remove all Lehigh Acres FD owned ambulances off the road. Lee County will be responsible for providing ambulances for the Lehigh area. For you disbelievers of the severity of this issue, I contacted my homeowners insurance company (Allstate) and asked what would happen if services are reduced to the levels predicted. I was advised that I will have to find a new insurance company. Yes folks, you read this correctly, our insurance companies will drop us if our ISO rating raises to 8 or 9. The assessment will be much cheaper than the cost for insurance to cover your home. Don’t believe me? Call your insurance company and ask.

   1. Lehigh Acres is a 4/9 Iso rating already. Your insurance company does not Iso it uses PPC rating currently Lehigh Acres is a 3/8 PPC rating. We did a story on the PPC rating and how it works you you should read it.

      Lehigh Acres Web Team

      1. ISO stands for Insurance Services Office. That is the company’s name and ISO is owned by a parent company called Verisk Analytics. PPC stands for Public Protection Class and it is a specific service that ISO offers. Nearly every insurance company in the U.S. uses this information to determine property insurance rates. When people refer to ISO they are usually referring to the PPC service rating.

         1. The average homeowner doesn’t know what the PPC is?

            The Lehigh Acres Gazette Web Team

3. This blog announcement by Mr. Anderson is full of “half-truths.” First of all, he made a public records request yesterday to the District as follows…

   From: Lehigh Acres Gazette [mailto:lehighacresgazette@gmail.com]
   Sent: Monday, July 14, 2014 3:11 PM
   To: Sue Platas; John Wayne
   Subject: Question FS 119

   Has any termination (or the possibility of termination) letters or emails went out to the employees of the district? And to whom?

   Robert Anderson
   Publisher
   Lehigh Acres Gazette

   My response was as follows…

   Has any termination or the possibility of termination letters or emails went out to the employees of the district? YES And to whom?

   These employees were laid-off the first time and recalled once the SAFER Grant was received and are on notice.
   1. Hayes
   2. Hetser
   3. Zasloff
   4. Imsdahl
   5. Potter
   6. Hanna, Jr.
   7. Howe
   8. Midea
   9. Boulanger
   10. Kruse, Jr.
   11. Palmer
   12. Overbee
   13. Posner
   14. Perez

   These employees were hired as a result of the SAFER grant and are on notice.
   15. Gafford
   16. Purcell
   17. Sherman
   18. Walsh
   19. Korte
   20. McDonald
   21. Slicker
   22. Sabiston
   23. Albert
   24. Diaz
   25. Rodriguez, R.
   26. Layton
   27. Hanes
   28. Montero
   29. Mozes
   30. Torres-Vasquez
   31. VanDyck
   32. York
   33. Bisgounis
   34. Classetti
   35. Joliff, Jr.
   36. Younger
   37. Grida
   38. Diaz
   39. Javier
   40. Rodriguez, L.
   41. Dean
   42. Flores
   43. Gilmore
   44. Mack
   45. Perez
   46. Guliano
   47. McGovern
   48. Colon
   49. Rodriguez, J.

   In addition, he was also sent a copy of the letter that each employee signs as a condition of employment and the wording is as follows…

   I, _______________________________, hereby acknowledge that I am being hired to fill a job position that has been created as a result of funding received by the Lehigh Acres Fire Control and Rescue District (“District”) from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (“SAFER”) Grant. I further acknowledge that the job position I am being hired to fill is covered by the SAFER Grant proceeds provided to the District with a specific period of performance. I also understand that certain terms and conditions of my employment at the District are currently subject to bargaining and are therefore subject to change during the term of my employment. Finally, I acknowledge that the job position I am filling may expire upon completion of the SAFER Grant’s period of performance, or earlier, if the SAFER Grant proceeds are terminated earlier.

   That being said, the current “performance period” of the SAFER Grant expires on September 13, 2014. At this time, the listed employees could be laid-off. However, we will be submitting for an extension to our current SAFER Grant due to the fact that we have funds left over that may be able to carry these employees through March 31, 2015. If the extension is approved, lay-offs would be postponed to April 1, 2015.

   In addition, the comments regarding future ambulance services in Lehigh Acres have been as follows…”the Lehigh Acres Fire Control and Rescue District will cease all ambulances services” as a result of massive layoffs. The ambulance services will have to be provided by Lee County EMS or any other provider approved by the County. The District never stated that there would be no ambulance services provided to the public…just the fact that the Fire District would not be providing them.

   I hope the public starts to see the pattern here…half-truths, non-verified data, misquotes, and poor reporting practices in general on behalf of the “Gazette.”

   I urge the public to GET INVOLVED, BE INFORMED, and MAKE AN EDUCATED DECISION at the polls in November.

   The public is encouraged to call the Fire District at 239-303-5300 to make an appointment to speak with the Fire Chief if you have any questions and/or concerns about any information provided in these blogs. In addition, our public meetings are posted on the District’s website (www.lehighfd.com) and the public is also encouraged to attend to have their voice heard. Thank you.

   1. Where is the “half-truth”? You the Chief have put them on notice! You have emailed those firefighters the other day to remind they are on notice.

      So who’s is selling half bake idea Chief?

      Lehigh Acres Gazette Web Team

   2. Oh John Wayne give it up!! You try to sell this crap to the public (scare tactics) I believe the editor of the gazettes investigative reporting about you and your departments!! Your just a flat out liar!! Can’t wait for November!!

4. The real issue is not with the fire chief. The issue is that the residents of these communities and the county have not looked at the whole picture. We, as a community and county, need to look at the overall consolidation of our emergency services. Let that be a County lead Fire/EMS like many counties in the state of Florida and across the nation, or a Lee County Sheriff lead department like Broward County and a couple others in the state, or a self standing single special taxing district lead by its own 7-9 panel Board of Commissioners. I dont understand why this hasnt been truly looked at and sought after. After all many hands help make the load light. Get informed with the real facts and get involved to fix the real problem. Having numerous fire districts is an antiquated system that no longer fits the model that is now is Lee County.

5. I pray to God for all the citizens of Lehigh when it takes extra time for ambulance to get to our homes. Minutes do really count when your loved ones need assistance. When our homes are being threated by brush fires and no one is there to save our property remember we caused this by not electing to increase our taxes. Really is a couple more bucks in our taxes worth lives and property. Thank You Lehigh firefighers for all you do for our community.

   1. Mrs. Callahan, The fire depart is lying to you even if Lehigh Fire gives up the ambulance service Lee County EMS will take over and place units in Lehigh Acres it’s the law. So there be no worries, plus all Lehigh Acres Fire Trucks have advance life support they just can not transport.

      The Lehigh Acres Gazette Web Team

6. Produce the e-mail Robert.

   1. We don’t have to produce anything for you Chief Wayne, but the firefighters we talked to say different so who’s lying now chief?

      The Lehigh Acres Gazette Web Team

7. Mr Editor,
   I am a well educated person who does not need you to tell me who is deceiving the citizens of lehigh. You are the one lying to the community and spewing your ignorant opinions. Do you really think EMS can handle this community and the rest of Lee County? The Lee County Commisioners don’t care about Lehigh so why should EMS? You obviously have a vendetta against Chief Wayne. You should contact the insurance reps and have them slowly explain to you the effects layoffs will have on our rates. You should put your personal feelings about the fire dept aside and start focusing on what this community really needs.

   1. The law is the law if Lehigh Fire can not or will not provide EMS service Lee County EMS will take over.

      This paper has no vendetta against Chief John Wayne or the firefighters of Lehigh Acres.

      We have contacted five different insurance companies including Florida Citizens and there is NO price increase if you live with 5 miles of a station and or 1000 feet of a fire hydrant. That the facts. also because it’s based on PPC with rating of Lehigh Acres of 3/8 instead of the ISO rating of 4/9.

      What Lehigh Acres needs is a fire board that listens to people and not hired attorney’s that have no relationships in Lehigh acres.

      The Lehigh Acres Gazette Web team

   2. It appears that Ms. Callahan is involved with the fire department as a spouse or Idiot!! I have seen several calls where the firemen are standing around and doing nothing while a couple or one does the work. Its like the editor said John Wayne is a liar and I have seen it first hand. Like I said before all of this playing around has caught up with you. And this Idiot Callahan about only costing the public a few more dollars to keep these clowns employed where in the hell did you come from??? Maybe we can all get our own fire hydrant like the little fireman next Lehigh acres middle school isn’t that convenient for him? Did our tax money pay for that? This whole department has the poorest service and response time I have ever seen and I’m a floridian native. I have seen better service from a volunteer dept. Lehigh fire dept is known as a door knob dept. because thats all that is left by the time they arrive. The public just needs to open their eyes and watch them and see the waste of money they are throwing away. I folled them the other day to Cane street for a grass fire 2 ladder trucks and 2 brush trucks and total of 4 people working on the brush trucks and the others standing around and the ladder trucks just ideling and burning fuel and firemen laughing and playing!!! This S@#T needs to end!!!!!!!!!!!

8. I have been reading the comments on this article and usually refrain from succombing to the political agenda that is attached to these types of forums the vast majority of the time. However, I have freinds and acquaintences who reside in Lehigh and I believe they deserve an accurate depiction of what is being portrayed as accurate and factual in this forum.

   There is not a separate grading schedule that the Editor refers to as the PPC apart from the ISO. The the PPC (Public Protection Classifucation) is the rating system that the ISO uses to rate the level of fire protection in a community. No other entity can assign a Public Protection Classification (PPC) to a community other than the ISO, as it is a proprietary grading system owned by the Insurance Services Office (ISO). There can only be one PPC rating I any given community at any given time, however it can be a split rating to differentiate between areas within 5 miles of a fire station and within 1000 feet of a fire hydrant and areas not within those llimits. Therefore, the rating is either a 3/8 or a 4/9, but not both. One of the classifications mentioned may be an old and out-dated one. Anyone can contact Lehigh Acres FD to find out what the current classification is.
   If it comes to the point where it becomes necessary for LeHigh Acres FD to discontinue Ambulance service, it is true that the County would be reauired to provide that service to the Lehigh area, but there is no requirement for the County to provide any set number of Ambulances in the Lehigh area, or even any at all for that matter. The County may determine that their current funding only allows them to run with the same number of Ambulances that they currently do out of the same locations that they currently do. In that case, the residents of Lehigh may have County Ambulance service, but they may be waiting for it to come from the closest current Lee County EMS station. It is possible that some units may be relocated, with a possibility of one or more being relocated into Lehigh Acres, but that is neither required by law nor guaranteed to happen through a management decision.

   The Lehigh Acres FD is in a tough situation right now, which means the residents, business owners, and visitors of Lehigh are in a tough situation as well. Innacurate and incomplete information being printed does nothing but exacerbate an already difficult situation. The fact is, Chief Wayne did not start the mess that Lehigh Acres FD is currently in. He simply took the helm of an already sinking ship that those who preceded him failed to take action to correct.

   I have only been in Southwest Florida a short time, but have been following the fire service situation down here for a few years, having been in the fire service myself for 36 years and finding myself leading a fire organization that was in this same situation just a couple of yeard ago, including picking up the pieces and fixing the mess left as the result of mismanagement and lack of appropriate action. Faced with a reduction in fire protection services due to the fimancial disarray of the District, the voters chose to increase their taxes in order to keep THEIR Firefighters and maintain an adequate level of protection and reasonable response times.

   From an outsider looking in, not even personally knowing Chief Wayne other than meeting him one time, and with an unbiased opinion, I do not see any of the purported scare tactics that the Editor is referring to. I simply see a Fire Chief who inherited a tough situation attempting to educate his constituants.

   By the way, if the Editor would have actually sat down and reasonably discussed the current situation with the Fire Chief instead of taking shots at him and writing accusatory articles, he may have found that in order to either apply for an extension of a current SAFER grant or to be eligible to submit an application for an additional SAFER grant for retention of firefighters, the personnel that the grant application is requesting to retain must first have been given notice of their impending layoff or job elimination.

   I apologize for any typing errors that may appear in my dissertation. I submitted this on my phone and am not quite as accurate with my thumbs as most teenagers seem to be.

   1. According to your email you address you work for Immokalee Fire district so you are a firefighter.

      Yes is a tough times but the Chief and the Board have other options and refuse to talk about them.

      And for the PPC and ISO issue you need to read http://thelehighacresgazette.com/news/how-do-homeowner-insurance-companies-rate-our-policy-for-fire-protection

      Thank you,
      Lehigh Acres Gazette Web Team

9. Kyle,

   You are obviously an ignorant person since you have to call people idiots because they do not agree with your grand ideas.You to obviously have a dislike for the Chief. Keep your personal dislike for him out of it and so some research yourself instead of listening to what Mr. Anderson spews. I have contacted Allstate and they also say rates will increase or we will be dropped.

   1. We just called a Allstate agent had them ran the numbers $52.00 in increase in homeowners insurance compared to a $232.25 increase in fire board tax. I bet that this homeowner pay the lower one, it’s just common sense.

      Facts are the facts.

      Lehigh Acres Gazette Web Team

      1. Just make a note that the fire assessment is not tax deductible so you lose twice.
         They have a $15,000,000 budget and $13,000,000 of it is for pay and benefits.

   2. Ms. Callahan,

      Its people like you that come out from under a rock or hole to express you Idiotic opinion on a subject that is completely about people getting paid to do nothing and wasting tax payers money!! I have nothing personal against John Wayne its just when someone like him is feeding the public open lies to keep an over funded fire dept and severely over staffed dept that it annoys myself!! Bottom line it seemed they functioned years back with the last cut it can work again.. Ms. Callahan if your still upset contact your Obama and whine to him.. You seem to be a staunch supporter of his Idiotic mentality. This is why the tax payers are in this boat now 🙁 November is fast approaching better get ready for it!!

10. Whether you like or dislike Chief Wayne, he provided true and accurate information. I know members of this department and the ones hired on SAFER Grant funding have known there was no guarantee to their employment.

    If you look around, Lehigh Acres is a busy department. Lehigh Acres and Ft. Myers Beach (sorry if I left out a dept) offer their residents an increased chance that a transport capable ambulance will be near-by when a medical emergency occurs. Lee County EMS is required by law to provide EMS county-wide. They have limited resources and I’m sure do their best with what they have to provide service to the citizens. If they are super busy, they are not going to have a unit in Lehigh most likely, they are going to reposition more centrally to cover a very large area. Fortunately their are Paramedic fire trucks county-wide. Un-fortunately even though they can provide the same level of care, they are not allowed by law to transport a patient.

    What was mentioned about insurance was true. Depending on what system your insurance company uses, if services are drastically reduced, your insurance will go up. Even Lehigh’s ambulances have cross trained FF’s onboard and count for staffing that Lehigh Acres sends to a fire.

    The voters will have the final say and I hope they are willing to live with their decision if they choose to vote it down.

    1. I’m willing and very able to live with my decision!! And as far as the dept being very busy you make me want to laugh! You mean the illusion of them being busy by running red lights returning to the station with their lights and sirens on, Going to subway for a sandwich, going to shop at Walmart, circle-k for a drink, hiding behind Winn Dixie to go grocery shopping all with lights on and sirens to make it appear to the public they are busy on a call. I have witnessed all of this!! Also followed one of the chiefs in the issued truck to him around 5pm one day running red lights with his lights and siren on all the way from the Napa auto parts to his home behind east lee county school!! I guess your telling me he was busy for the dept also!! How about on their down time they ride in their trucks with all of their gear and do some community work in the parks and around county buildings like mowing, painting, picking up trash and then the community can see they are all really busy and earning that tax money!! Watcha think????????

11. WOW, as I sit her laughing to myself at all the negative comments, I just have to ask this Kyle, where does such rage and animosity for a tiny little Fire station, in a little po dunk community such as Lehigh Acres, Fl come from? Could it possibly be that you were either let go?? OR never made it to be a BIG STRONG firefighter? I picture a small innocent child, whose only dream was to grow up and fight fires…but to his dismay, was denied the opportunity. Please go talk to someone, anger and resentment, especially when misplaced can eat you alive. I am sad for you 🙁
    The REAL discussion here should be about the safety of the Lehigh community, not a place to spew your own anger.

    1. think you hit this one on the head! I have to wonder if some of these people had to risk their life to retrieve someone from a burning building because of others carelessness or had to extract a person from an auto because of someones lack of sense or picked up a child laying in the road because of others lack of responsibility, would they consider their local fire department a bunch of clowns? sounds more like a disgruntled person that Loretta so accurately described. the fire personnel have been given a bad hand to play with for sure. like any organization, some are there for the money, some for the prestige, but most are there for the belief they have in their mission. as for the citizens of Lehigh, they have a decision to make in the near future that will impact everyone, whether it be in the emergency response and readiness of the fire department or their pocket book. unfortunately, in my opinion, the commissioners didn’t come up with a plan that could have been more compatible with the average homeowner and put less emphasis on “the courts” possible concern. don’t believe all you are being told about the county taking over the EMS and all is well and no problems. first, where do you think they will get the extra manpower and equipment and money to take on Lehigh? oh yea, I forgot, they have a bunch of clowns sitting around shopping and doing lunch too! your ISO rating will change. you may live within 1000 ft of a hydrant and within 5 miles of a station, but what happens if there is no longer anyone to respond from that station and it takes twice as long to get to that hydrant 1000 ft from your house? my guess is your insurance rate goes up a lot more the 52 bucks a year. I have been rambling on too long – go to meetings and bring your concerns – give ideas and help bring positive results for the community – cut back on the ranting and raving in blogs – and have a good day!

    2. No sweetie, I had a real job working on average 16hrs a day and not sitting on my ass. I grew up in Miami Springs,Florida as a child and lived 24yrs next to a fire dept and seen and learned exactly what the firemen do in a small town like Lehigh Acres. Run a few calls a week turn your lights and sirens on when going to a call or not so the we look busy so that we are not replaced with a volunteer dept!! ( THE SAME AS IS GOING ON IN LEHIGH ). Now as for the impression I have of you lO-RETTA a wrinkled faced prune morbidly obese po trash woman gazing all day at her fake firemen in her torn page collection of old porn calenders holding a handful of dead batteries for her worn out self-pleasure toys searching for a real man she could never possibly hope of having, Bet I’m right!!!! Bottom line with the lehigh dept. THE TRUTH AND FACTS HURT!!!

       1. Kyle,

          I used to work for LAFD in 2010, and was hired on the first SAFER GRANT. I just wanted to give you some facts and let you know this is not an attack just facts. LAFD is an extremly busy dept…..mostly stations 1,2,3,4 while I was there. March to June was slammed with brush fires back to back during dry seasons. As for FF standing around on calls yes this happens. Dept’s respond to calls in a “send the calvary” mannor. This is so if the incident is bigger than what was dispatched the troops are there and ready. I could preech all day the rellevance of the dept but I feel this would not be useful. I suggest you go do a ride along on Rescue 102 or 103 or 104 and see first hand the importance of these men and women.

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