{"id":9855,"date":"2012-06-20T21:30:19","date_gmt":"2012-06-21T02:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=9855"},"modified":"2012-07-03T12:49:07","modified_gmt":"2012-07-03T17:49:07","slug":"setting-the-record-straight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2012\/06\/setting-the-record-straight\/","title":{"rendered":"Setting The Record Straight"},"content":{"rendered":"
Special Guest Editorial by J. L. Kreger <\/strong>
\nPresident – The Community Council of Lehigh Acres<\/strong><\/h5>\n
\"\"<\/a>
J. L. Kreger\u00a0– President – The Community Council of Lehigh Acres<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A recent story published in the Merchant\u2019s Marketer was filled with innuendos, untruths, and much misleading information.\u00a0 The writer is an elected public official who should be considerable smarter that he shows himself to be.\u00a0 For example, in his most recent story about the Lehigh Fleamarket at 270 Beth Stacy Blvd., he stated that it had been in existence in some form for over 50 years.\u00a0 This is not true.<\/p>\n

Truth is the fleamarket building came into existence in 1974 (several years after the property was first used by the Lehigh Corp. to host the Spring Festivals) in accordance with county ordinances that were in place at the time.\u00a0 Vendors were only allowed to use the INSIDE of the building.\u00a0 This is a far cry from what exists now.\u00a0 In 2010, the owner went before the County Commission to request a permit to use the space as a fleamarket for up to 6 inside vendors.\u00a0 No further request has been made to the Commission.<\/p>\n

In April of 2012, the owner was cited for 19 violations by Lee County and the local Fire Department.\u00a0 All the violations concern health and safety issues for the vendors and the general public.<\/p>\n

Not a single member of the Community Council has a problem with the Fleamarket or has any animosity towards any of the vendors.\u00a0 The Fleamarket manager came asking the Community Council to support them.\u00a0 However, with 19 code violations, the Council tried to determine who the owner fo the property was, but the manager refused to divulge this information.\u00a0 The Council tried to direct him to the owner to resolve the problem.\u00a0 The fact remains that the OWNER did not address any of these code violations.\u00a0 Once the problems were made public, he became willing to do something about it.\u00a0 For that, the vendors who have been paying rent to the owner should be thankful.\u00a0 Their building will comply with Lee County and Local Fire Codes; food vendors will be able to go to the bathroom, wash their hands, and the building will be safe.\u00a0 That\u2019s all something that should have happened BEFORE not AFTER.<\/p>\n

When one considers the writer\u2019s background (once the aid to one of our State Senators), one might hope he would better understand the law.\u00a0 His ignorance shows or perhaps he conveniently forgets by stating \u201cI am not sure what the Community Council is or what it does.\u00a0 When he worked for the Senator, he arranged several meetings with himself and the Senator before the Community Council\u00a0 from 1998 to as late as the early 2000\u2019s asking for \u201ctheir\u201d council,\u201d \u201ctheir\u201d help, and \u201ctheir\u201d assistance with many matters concerning Lehigh Acres.\u00a0 Hmmn\u2026.<\/p>\n

As an elected official in Lehigh, he should be held to a higher standard.\u00a0 Writing hateful articles implying that the oldest organized group of citizens working to make this a better community has an agenda of racism and viciousness shows exactly what type individual he is.\u00a0 This talk can only strain relationships between good people.\u00a0 However, as proof of his continued vindictiveness, he feels it necessary to print the \u201cAnderson Watch,\u201d something I\u2019m sure all of us wait for breathlessly each month.\u00a0 In this latest issue, he tries justifying his own actions of removing a young lady working as a reporter for a media other than his advertising supplement (that would be a violation of the reporter\u2019s constitutional rights) from attending an event where the public was invited.\u00a0\u00a0 Perhaps the writer feels he is above the law!<\/p>\n

With regard to Jack Morse\u2019s story in the same publication, he works for the REAL OWNER of the fleamarket.\u00a0 He continues the attack on Anderson blaming the investigative reporting that resulted in 19 violations as something evil.\u00a0\u00a0 He states Anderson was encouraged by the Community Council to \u201cgo after\u201d the fleamarket.\u00a0 You can put this in the same category as the previous writers\u2019 misrepresentations.\u00a0 The first time any conversation of the fleamarket came up at a Community Council meeting was when they were blindsided by whoever \u201corchestrated\u201d the events of the May 21st meeting.\u00a0 He also tried to stir up visions of racially motivated hate crimes, by paraphrasing a comment that was taken out of context.<\/p>\n

The Community Council of Lehigh Acres is very interested in keeping Lehigh Acres as a great place to live and work.\u00a0 Any citizen is welcomed at our meetings which are held at the Lee County Sheriff Substation on Plaza Dr. the 3rd Monday evening of each month at 6:30pm.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Special Guest Editorial by J. L. Kreger President – The Community Council of Lehigh Acres A recent story published in the Merchant\u2019s Marketer was filled with innuendos, untruths, and much… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9855"}],"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=9855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}