{"id":33380,"date":"2014-10-31T15:40:27","date_gmt":"2014-10-31T19:40:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=33380"},"modified":"2014-10-31T15:43:34","modified_gmt":"2014-10-31T19:43:34","slug":"12-lehigh-acres-firefighters-double-dripping-your-tax-dollars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2014\/10\/12-lehigh-acres-firefighters-double-dripping-your-tax-dollars\/","title":{"rendered":"12 Lehigh Acres Firefighters Double<br> Dripping Your Tax Dollars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-33381\" title=\"double-dip\" src=\"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/double-dip-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/double-dip-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/double-dip.jpg 620w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>Currently 12 Lehigh Acres Fire Firefighters making over $100,000 which includes pay and all benefits. \u00a0These 12 employees are already retired under the Florida Retirement System but are working under the FRS DROP program.<\/p>\n<p>The Florida Deferred Retirement Option Program (DROP) provides an alternative method for payment of the employees retirement benefits for a specified and limited period (5 years).<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Under this program, the employee stops earning service credit toward a future benefit, the employees retirement benefit calculated at the time the DROP period begins and their monthly retirement benefits accumulate in the FRS Trust Fund earning interest while the employee continue to work for an FRS employer.<\/p>\n<p>The Fire District still has to pay into their FRS account but a reduce rate. But upon termination, the employees DROP account is paid to you as a lump sum payment, a rollover or a combination partial lump sum payment and rollover.<\/p>\n<p>This means these 12 LAFD employees are double dripping your tax dollars for up to 5 years and padding their retirement account with your tax dollars.<\/p>\n<p>If these 12 vested employees where to leave to district today the fire district could save 21 to 23 other firefighter jobs because the Chief John Wayne has stated for the record the beginning pay for a LAFD firefighter is $38,000 a year. \u00a0According to the Chief Wayne it\u2019s just simple third grade math.<\/p>\n<p>So will these 12 vested employees retire to help save other jobs?<\/p>\n<p>Why hasn\u2019t the Fire Commissioners even talked about this cost saving in a meeting?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Currently 12 Lehigh Acres Fire Firefighters making over $100,000 which includes pay and all benefits. \u00a0These 12 employees are already retired under the Florida Retirement System but are working under&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":33381,"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\/33380"}],"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=33380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}