![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/open-letter.jpg\" "\\"open-letter\\"")
<\/a>An Open letter to the Lehigh Acres Fire Control and Rescue District Commissioners…..<\/p>\nToo often, people only listen, to reply, rather than listening to understand or solve. In that regard, this proposed Budget appears not yet to be worked out or solved.<\/p>\n
In 2010, the District received, what is known as the SAFER Grant.<\/p>\n
It was said “The Lehigh Acres Board of Fire Commissioners may not want to apply for another SAFER Grant”.<\/p>\n
Also said, without the SAFER Grant, the District must lay off, 40-50 employees. Sounds like a catch 22, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n
Today we are faced with the fact either the District knew, they needed additional revenue or the District lacked the knowledge base required to even accept the Grant Money.<\/p>\n
I say this because as you know, a simple Trend Analysis would have showed, that increase revenue, would be needed to fulfill the grant requirements.<\/p>\n
So now, the District wants to either use part of the Reserve Fund or levy a non-ad valorem assessment upon the people of Lehigh Acres.<\/p>\n
I dislike a budget lacking detail and showing line items as rounded numbers. Because numbers provided through proper trend analyzes seldom are rounded.<\/p>\n
Yet in this budget, there it is a lack of detail and rounded numbers. The Union asked for more details, justifications, regarding this budget, and we can see why.<\/p>\n
It appears the District declared an impasse because either the District couldn\u2019t or wouldn\u2019t provide the Financial Analysis of all District funds used to produce this budget.<\/p>\n
The District either couldn\u2019t or wouldn\u2019t provide a financial forecast, including baseline and alternative forecasts; resulting from analyses of the reserves, capital program, debt, liabilities or financial policies.<\/p>\n
However, knowing the District\u2019s personnel have provided falsified and misleading information before, I cannot expect this budget, to be any more accurate than the misleading information District personnel provided in the past.<\/p>\n
Only through true leadership can we solve both the economic and safety concerns of the people of Lehigh Acres.<\/p>\n
It is at this time I ask the Board, rather than approving this Budget, to instead request an extension to filing (under Florida Statue 189.419), so true leadership can be shown.
\nCommissioners, I am simply asking for this Board,<\/p>\n
To Do the Right Thing.<\/p>\n
The District may want to also address their own challenges when it comes to the improper billing for their medical services. I wonder how many thousands of dollars the District is losing because they don\u2019t bill properly.<\/p>\n
Otherwise, it would appear KEVIN SHEA may have been correct.<\/p>\n
Jim Lowery<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Editor, An Open letter to the Lehigh Acres Fire Control and Rescue District Commissioners….. Too often, people only listen, to reply, rather than listening to understand or solve. In… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,61],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13621"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13621\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}