{"id":32868,"date":"2014-09-23T10:54:10","date_gmt":"2014-09-23T14:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=32868"},"modified":"2014-09-23T10:54:10","modified_gmt":"2014-09-23T14:54:10","slug":"lehigh-acres-fire-assessment-fee-campaign-draws-heat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2014\/09\/lehigh-acres-fire-assessment-fee-campaign-draws-heat\/","title":{"rendered":"Lehigh Acres Fire Assessment Fee Campaign Draws Heat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Video courtesy of NBC-2.com by Ty Russell, Reporter<\/p>\n<p><center><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/WBBH.images.worldnow.com\/interface\/js\/WNVideo.js?rnd=521841;hostDomain=www.nbc-2.com;playerWidth=600;playerHeight=355;isShowIcon=true;clipId=10612749;flvUri=;partnerclipid=;adTag=News;advertisingZone=;enableAds=true;landingPage=;islandingPageoverride=false;playerType=STANDARD_EMBEDDEDscript;controlsType=overlay\"><\/script><a title=\"NBC-2.com WBBH News for Fort Myers, Cape Coral \" href=\"http:\/\/www.nbc-2.com\">NBC-2.com WBBH News for Fort Myers, Cape Coral <\/a><\/center>Anthonie Barrett takes issue with new flyers, a new billboard, and the new GetTheFactsLehigh.Com website.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Bad propaganda,\u201d Barrett said.<\/p>\n<p>The advertisements are meant to inform voters about the proposed Lehigh Acres fire assessment fee. But some believe they&#8217;re using scare tactics and bordering on the illegal.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s atrocious spending of taxpayer money,\u201d Barrett said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This propaganda campaign lead by Fire Chief John Wayne (Gotti) and the head of the Five Families (the LAFC&amp;RD Commissioners) is at best mob style protection scam, and at worse it is a death threat to every resident and taxpayer in Lehigh Acres.&#8221; said Barrett<\/p>\n<p>Barrett continued by stating &#8220;What is your life worth?, that statement if said by anyone other than the Teflon Chief and the Capofamiglia of the LAFC&amp;RD they would likely be in jail.&#8221;<br \/>\nBarrett also there is a website with REAL facts about this at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gettherealfactslehigh.com\/realfacts\">www.gettherealfactslehigh.com\/realfacts<\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more-->The Florida Attorney General&#8217;s Office confirms they are reviewing complaints about the advertisements. They received the first one Monday morning and are expecting more to roll in this week.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My husband is disabled and a retired service member. We are on a fixed income,\u201d Debra Cunningham said.<\/p>\n<p>Cunningham says she can&#8217;t afford the fee. She&#8217;s also worried non-profits like the VFW will not be exempt from it &#8211; even though fire leaders say they will be.<\/p>\n<p>If voters approve it in November, they&#8217;ll pay $292 a year for fire and EMS. It&#8217;s a big difference from what Barrett is paying now.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Presently I pay $57 and change,\u201d Barrett said.<\/p>\n<p>If it fails, the fire chief says he&#8217;ll only have $8 million to work with each year. He&#8217;ll be forced to layoff half the department and that will double the response times to 14 minutes for Lee County&#8217;s largest fire district measured in square miles.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Take care of our firefighters, take care of our community and get your hands out of our wallet,\u201d Cunningham said.<\/p>\n<p>Cunningham doesn&#8217;t want the tax dollars going to the flyers either. But fire leaders say they are legal and it&#8217;s the only way to inform voters about what&#8217;s going on before the election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Video courtesy of NBC-2.com by Ty Russell, Reporter NBC-2.com WBBH News for Fort Myers, Cape Coral Anthonie Barrett takes issue with new flyers, a new billboard, and the new GetTheFactsLehigh.Com&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":13166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32868"}],"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=32868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}