{"id":30716,"date":"2014-05-06T20:27:06","date_gmt":"2014-05-07T00:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=30716"},"modified":"2014-05-06T20:27:06","modified_gmt":"2014-05-07T00:27:06","slug":"oh-what-a-tangled-web-we-weave-when-first-we-practice-to-deceive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2014\/05\/oh-what-a-tangled-web-we-weave-when-first-we-practice-to-deceive\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh, What A Tangled Web We Weave When First We Practice To Deceive \u2026."},"content":{"rendered":"

Editorial by Robert Anderson, Publisher Lehigh Acres Gazette<\/p>\n

\"\"Oh, What A Tangled Web We Weave When First We Practice To Deceive \u2026.. The Taxpayers of Lehigh Acres. Should this be the calling card of the Fire Board now?<\/p>\n

Fire Board Public Education Campaign $$$$ How Much is this going cost the taxpayers of Lehigh Acres for this education using our own tax dollars?<\/p>\n

From the Lehigh Acres Fire Department Website:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Fire District will be instituting a public education campaign in the near future regarding the fee assessment methodology\/process. The goal of the District is to provide each taxpayer with accurate information so they are able to make an educated decision on the level of Fire and Rescue Services that will be provided to the residents and visitors of Lehigh Acres, Florida in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how much is too much. \u00a0The Fire Board has already budgeted $75,000 of your tax dollars<\/strong> for consultants and attorneys. They could have hired a new firefighter for that money!<\/p>\n

President Abraham Lincoln once said, you can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are transparent and have any\/all documentation available to the public for review.\u201d<\/strong>, Fire Chief John Wayne said by email.<\/p>\n

But this is not 100% true, when The Lehigh Acres Gazette made a request for payroll information it was delayed for days and when we finely got it some of the key information was not provided to us. So where is the transparency?\u00a0 Did the Chief violate the public trust when not providing all the information requested?<\/p>\n

\u201cOur information is based upon fact and is undisputable.\u201d<\/strong>, Fire Chief John Wayne said by email talking about the fire assessment fees. \u00a0Really???? But their consultant and their special attorney both have been removed or resigned from other boards in Florida for giving bad advice. Currently their consultant faces seven different lawsuits and at one time the feds refused to continue pay on a 3 million dollar grant until the consultant resigned for questionable wrong doing.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s talk about other more relevant items, how about the internal debt the fire board still owes the taxpayers of Lehigh Acres in the tune of 2.5 million dollars. Some prior years ago when money was flowing like river the board used the old concept \u2013 Rob Peter to Pay Paul. They used your tax money as impact fee money because they ran out of impact fee money to pay off the new stations (104 & 105) which caused a 2.5 million internal deficit in the budget and it\u2019s still there today. Is the board planning to double tax us to pay back that debt?<\/p>\n

And the story continues \u2026\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editorial by Robert Anderson, Publisher Lehigh Acres Gazette Oh, What A Tangled Web We Weave When First We Practice To Deceive \u2026.. The Taxpayers of Lehigh Acres. Should this be… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30716"}],"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=30716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}