{"id":43277,"date":"2019-06-05T08:33:26","date_gmt":"2019-06-05T12:33:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=43277"},"modified":"2019-06-05T08:33:32","modified_gmt":"2019-06-05T12:33:32","slug":"lee-county-commissioners-cant-make-quorum-cancels-regular-and-tax-rate-meetings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2019\/06\/lee-county-commissioners-cant-make-quorum-cancels-regular-and-tax-rate-meetings\/","title":{"rendered":"Lee County Commissioners can&#8217;t make quorum; cancels regular and tax rate meetings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/lee-county-commissioners.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-43278\" width=\"434\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/lee-county-commissioners.jpg 900w, https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/lee-county-commissioners-300x150.jpg 300w, https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/lee-county-commissioners-768x384.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 434px) 100vw, 434px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>The Lee County Board of County  Commissioners failed to muster a quorum Tuesday for the<strong> first time in nearly 29 years<\/strong>, forcing cancellation of both a regular morning meeting and an afternoon budget meeting at which the tax rates for the coming year were expected to be discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tax rates are due to be finalized at a June 18 budget meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The death of Commissioner Larry Kiker\u00a0had left the commission with four members, only one more than the three-member majority needed to be on hand for a meeting to formally convene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Commissioner\n Cecil Pendergrass was absent because he was with members of the county \nTourist&nbsp;Development Council at a conference in Anaheim, California, \nTuesday. He had previously said he couldn&#8217;t&nbsp;attend the Tuesday morning \nsession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Commissioner Frank Mann had been out of the country and provided a memorandum to fellow commissioners and the county\u00a0that he would be absent\u00a0until June 3.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Acting as chairman, Hamman announced that both the regular meeting and the afternoon budget meeting were canceled.\u00a0Asked about Mann&#8217;s absence as the meeting broke up, Hamman said didn&#8217;t know Mann wouldn&#8217;t be there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The last time the commission failed to meet a quorum was on Aug. 22, 1990.  Ironically, as was the case Tuesday, John Manning was one of the two commissioners who showed up at that meeting. Two commissioners were on vacation then and another was unable to attend because of the death of a  local activist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This time, not having a replacement for Kiker, who died in April,&nbsp;played into the lack of a quorum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Power to appoint a successor lies with Gov. Ron DeSantis. His office\u00a0hasn&#8217;t even\u00a0made public the applications of individuals who have applied to replace him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Lee County Board of County Commissioners failed to muster a quorum Tuesday for the first time in nearly 29 years, forcing cancellation of both a regular morning meeting and&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":43278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43277"}],"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=43277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}