{"id":37269,"date":"2015-10-06T23:32:32","date_gmt":"2015-10-07T03:32:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=37269"},"modified":"2015-10-06T23:40:46","modified_gmt":"2015-10-07T03:40:46","slug":"what-has-your-new-fire-assessment-paid-for-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2015\/10\/what-has-your-new-fire-assessment-paid-for-so-far\/","title":{"rendered":"What Has Your New Fire
Assessment Paid For So Far?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The fire board approved the new union contract.<\/p>\n

Over $700,000 thousand dollars of new or returned benefits to all of the Lehigh Acres firefighters. And GUARANTEED bonuses for all EMT\u2019s and Paramedics to do their jobs in the ambulances.<\/p>\n

Station 105 fire truck which has not been in operation since March 1st 2015 will be in operation as of Wednesday.<\/p>\n

GUARANTEED Over $750,000 thousand dollars in overtime pay for the first 18 months during this new union contract.<\/p>\n

And that’s only for the first year of the union contract there are additional incentives and return benefits scheduled each and every year for the second and third year of that contract\u00a0which could be an additional $500,000 each year. Click here<\/a> to see the new 80 page union contract.<\/p>\n

So what else has the Fire Board done?<\/p>\n

They have ordered three new ambulances ($750,000 dollars) to be delivered in January 2016. Plus the board will be scheduling to order two more ambulances (Totally $500,000) plus a $650,000 fire truck to be delivered late 2016 or early 2017.<\/p>\n

And what has the fire assessment done for the taxpayers in Lehigh Acres 98% of all residential housing in Lehigh Acres will see a tax increase as of November 1st 2015, 100% of all the vacant lots in Lehigh will see a tax increase and even Presbyterian homes will see a $140,000 dollar tax increase on senior housing.<\/p>\n

Plus since this town is so desperate for commercial properties the fire department has raised the taxes on commercial nearly 300% will this stop commercial growth?<\/p>\n

Will cost of living increase in Lehigh Acres due to the fire assessment tax on commercial properties?<\/p>\n

Plus the Fire District is still being sued by LA-MSID formerly East County Water Control District for their Fire assessment bill. This is taxpayer money being used against taxpayer money.<\/p>\n

By the way even with the fire assessment the fire district is still 2.2 million dollars in debt .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fire board approved the new union contract. Over $700,000 thousand dollars of new or returned benefits to all of the Lehigh Acres firefighters. And GUARANTEED bonuses for all EMT\u2019s… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":37270,"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\/37269"}],"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=37269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}