{"id":38695,"date":"2016-02-04T09:54:53","date_gmt":"2016-02-04T14:54:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=38695"},"modified":"2016-02-04T09:54:53","modified_gmt":"2016-02-04T14:54:53","slug":"fire-chief-to-leave-in-july-many-community-leaders-thrilled-with-his-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2016\/02\/fire-chief-to-leave-in-july-many-community-leaders-thrilled-with-his-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire Chief To Leave In July, Many Community Leaders Thrilled With His Decision"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_31520\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-31520\" style=\"width: 292px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-31520\" title=\"Fire Chief John Wayne\" src=\"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Fire-Chief-John-Wayne.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"292\" height=\"286\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-31520\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fire Chief John Wayne<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In a surprise announcement last week, Lehigh Acres Fire Chief John Wayne says he will not attempt to renew his job contract when it ends later this year.<\/p>\n<p>The announcement was made at the end of the fire district board of commission meeting.<\/p>\n<p>His announcement came at the first meeting that was conducted by Cathy Kruse, who was elected by her peers on the board at the last meeting to be chairman. During that time, Kruse has found many issues with Wayne\u2019s decision making<\/p>\n<p>Earlier, new board member Matt Smith, has asked for discussion by the board about having a job evaluation for the chief.<\/p>\n<p>After very heated exchange between members of the board, it was agreed upon that the board either hold a workshop or take it up during a regular meeting in April.<\/p>\n<p>Now the board will have to form a search committee to find a new chief.<\/p>\n<p>Wayne oversaw the conversion of the way Lehigh Acres taxpayers pay their fire taxes. Now it\u2019s an assessment fee that funds the fire department, which was facing so-called financial disaster due to the economic recession.<\/p>\n<p>Now community leaders are now facing their own financial disaster due huge taxing bills for the fire dept. An unnamed source said, \u201cJust maybe we can fix the fire now and lower these exorbitant fire taxes.\u201d Other source said, \u201cGlad that XXXXX is leaving so the board doesn\u2019t have to waste the time to fire him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Voters went to the polls a year ago and voted for an assessment fee to levy against the rate holders in Lehigh. Had it not passed, some of the department would have been forced to close and new equipment, including fire trucks and ambulances, would not be replaced.<\/p>\n<p>While the board supported the new assessment fee, it was Wayne whose work included speaking before the public on behalf of the new assessment fee and lying at the community leaders that we have spoken to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a surprise announcement last week, Lehigh Acres Fire Chief John Wayne says he will not attempt to renew his job contract when it ends later this year. The announcement&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":31520,"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\/38695"}],"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=38695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}