Fiscal Rangers

Lake County Commissioners Need to Deny Re-Zoning for Clermont Mosque

Tavares, FL - March 26, 2012 Update: On Tuesday, March 27, the Lake County Board denied the re-zoning request described below, basically for the types of reasons I mentioned. vj Tomorrow, Tuesday, March 27, a group called the Clermont Islamic Center (CIC) is trying to get a 4+ acre section of land near Clermont re-zoned by the Lake County Commissioners from Agriculture to Community Development so they can build a 2500 sq. foot , 45 foot high Muslim Mosque with 199 parking spaces. It would be in an agriculture area with single family homes and lack of adequate roads to handle the expected traffic of 2,000 vehicle arrival & departures per day. It would be the highest building in the entire area except for the Citrus Tower. Both the City of Clermont Council, and the Lake County Zoning Commission have voted against the re-zoning. However, the Lake County "planning & growth" staff DID recommend the re-zoning, but their reasons are vague, based upon the new County Comprehensive Plan (which makes it suspect right there) AND the possibility they screwed up and did not calculate the true traffic impact the mosque would have on the area. The Lake County Planning staff... Read more →

Did Aliens Scramble Voting Results in Palm Beach County - Read and Decide

Tavares, FL - March 20, 2012 This is a good article below to illustrate how amateur data management in local government agencies like the Palm Beach County Elections office can result in poor safeguards that then allow huge errors. In this case, apparently, the order of the names on a recent local ballot in Palm Beach County. FL did not match which fields were used to calculate candidate totals, so that people using the ballots saw a specific name, but their vote for that line item was added into totals for a different name for the election results. The Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor, Susan Bucher, apparently When a manager blames the mysterious computer for a glitch, rather than the people or process for programming it, then they need to go. It also means they didn’t have good quality control procedures to test and ensure data was accurate. The citizens cannot afford to have computer illiterate officials in charge of data focused operations. According to this article, this is a pattern with the Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor. However, the article does NOT say how the Elections Supervisor, Susan Bucher, detected the problem AFTER all the votes were certified. Was... Read more →

National Website Monitors "State Integrity" and Ranks States - Florida is a C-

Tavares, FL - March 20, 2012 I found a new website that is run by a number pf public integrity types of organizations, and they rank all the States by several categories and rank their "Corruption Risk". Here is Florida's page, which shows abysmal rankings in most categories, and an average C- in Corruption Risk . Even with that ranking, they are 18th out of all the states, which shows how much worse other states are. http://www.stateintegrity.org/florida I noticed that they ranked "Internal Audit" as one of the only "A" categories, so I posted this comment: As a former corporate internal audit director, Certified Internal Auditor and anti-corruption adviser, I was amazed to see you give Florida an A for internal audit. I write a blog on local Lake County, FL government agency fiscal fiascos and mis-management at www.FiscalRangers.com . After five years of monitoring issues here, I do not believe there is ANY oversight on about 2000 local government agencies comparable to what I saw in Fortune 500 firms, the County of Los Angeles or even the Federal government. They may do nice, clean "financial audits" but the Inspector General has no authority to initiate performance or internal audits... Read more →

Lake County Veterans Confront Democrats Regarding Defaced American Flag in Tavares, FL

Updated March 17, 2012 - Tavares, FL - March 13, 2012 (original publication date) - Updated to add links to other press stories at 10:30pm (bottom of document) More updates added 3/14, 15 & 17. This has gone really viral. We are almost the only free source for the pictures. The Lake County, FL Democratic Headquarters in Tavares has been flying TWO American flags outside their office. The first is an American Flag, the second is an American flag where the area with stars has been covered over with a picture of Barack Obama. A veterans group from Leesburg and media arrived today at 4pm to demand the flag be pulled down. The democratic Party Chair for Lake County, Nancy Hurlbert, initially refused to allow the veterans to pull the flag down, saying it was private property and she would review the issue. The leader of the Veterans, Don Van Beck, had a copy of a law saying that such "defacement" of the American Flag was illegal. Beck is the organizer of the Veteran's Memorial at Fountain Park, in nearby Leesburg, FL. About 10 minutes later, Nancy Hurlbert came out and took down the flag. About 20 people were present,... Read more →

Lake County Government Website Receives "Sunny Award" for good Website Transparency

Tavares, FL - March 13, 2012 This is National Sunshine Week, and Lake County received an award for how the County website provided information to improve "transparency" over local government actions. Congratulations to Lake County, FL Government for receiving the "Sunny Award" from Sunshine Review, a journal on government transparency located in the Washington D.C area. They ranked 6000 government websites and only 214 received the Sunny Award, and Lake County's website was one. Lake County's website was scored an "A" transparency grade on Sunshine Review's Transparency Checklist. It goes to show, that Lake County will do anything to keep me from providing public input at a Board meeting!! I notice that their winners list also included many School Districts, including nearby Orange County. Here is the website page listing all 214 "A" Sunny Award winners, including Lake County: http://sunshinereview.org/index.php/2012_Sunny_Awards Here is the webpage describing the "Transparency Checklist" and method used to determine Sunny Awards and rankings. They have checklists for cities, countys, school districts & state agencies: http://sunshinereview.org/index.php/Transparency_checklist However, I couldn't help notice that one of the checklist items isn't followed much at Lake County. They post financial audits, but not performance audits and there are no evaluations of... Read more →

Lake County Mobile Home Owners Losing Out on $3-million State Funded Retrofit Program to Reduce Hurricane Damage

Tavares, FL - Dec. 9, 2011 - Lake County may be losing out on a State funded program to retrofit tie downs for older mobile homes to reduce damage from hurricanes. Newer mobile homes have much stricter tie down requirements, and the retrofit is to upgrade older homes. Apparently, there is a program funded by the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe fund for about $3-million, and Lake County residents never get a chance to make use of the funds. Their "contacts" page is HERE. It pays up to about $1600 for contractors to refit older mobile homes with more tie-downs and "stabilizer" bars to reduce the possibility of the home shifting during high hurricane winds. Well, we WROTE an article on just that problem in Lake County after the tornadoes two years ago, and it is HERE. I had asked the County building inspector at one damaged mobile home park if they had any inspection standards for older homes to recommend improved tie down methods used in more recent mobile homes. She said they did not. NOW, the St. Petersburg Times has written an expose HERE on the secretive program (2020 update - this link no longer works) and exposed that the... Read more →

Lake County Board of Commissioners Surprises & Depresses Citizens at Recent Board Meeting

Tavares, FL 32778 - Dec. 14, 2011 We described in our Monday blog posting about several subjects to be discussed at the offsite, somewhat secret workshop of the Lake County Board of County Commissioners that was held Tuesday at Camp Challenge, just east of Sorrento. The meeting was important because several issues affecting long range decisions on budgets, taxes and other issues were discussed. 1. Public Input now allowed - First, Kudos to Commissioner Leslie Campione, who is now the new Chair of the Board. She reversed a prior policy of limiting public input to allowing public input for EACH agenda item, a first for the County, but common at the Lake County School District. We have been lobbying for that improvement for at least 3 years. Previous Board Chairs Jennifer Hill and Welton Cadwell severely limited public input and normally would NOT have allowed ANY public input at a workshop like this. As a result of Campione's new policy, many attendees, including residents of the Sorrento - Mounty Plymouth area (where the meeting was held), this author, leaders from Mt. Dora & the League of Cities, were able to provide feedback on specific issues, which I believe improved the... Read more →

Lake County Government Update on Feb. 9, 2012 Board Meeting

Tavares, FL - Feb. 9, 2012 by Vance Jochim - FiscalRangers.com These are notes related to the Feb. 9th Lake County Board Meeting Tab 25 - Lake County Board Quarterly Budget Update Summary: The Board spent about 35 minutes discussing an update on the current and next year's budgets. They are on target on the current budget, and showed graphs on Quarter 1. The process and details of the presentation are getting much better and closer to what you would see in corporations. The staff also presented expectations for establishing the budget for 2013, and they expect that revenues will be reduced another 5% for each of the next two years due to dropping property tax valuations and other revenue sources. The Board and staff also are working out a much better process to ensure the Constitutional officers are engaged in budget talks, so there are no last minute surprises or standoffs like last year. Details of the budget discussion: (You can also view the online archived VIDEO of this portion of the meeting HERE (video 2 for the Feb. 7), and the Powerpoint is located under tab 25 on the agenda webpage HERE. The Board is still in the... Read more →

Leesburg Regional Tea Party Meeting Report - Mar. 5, 2012

This is a new and growing Tea Party group in the Leesburg, FL (Lake County) area, so here is their report. If you want to join them, email Carol Knighton to get information and ask to be added to their email list: Carol Knighton [[email protected]] Todd Parrish, Americans For Prosperity - www.AFPFlorida.com - came to our meeting. Todd has been working in the political arena for about 25 years and is a fountain of knowledge. He explained to us the legislative process in Tallahassee and gave us some insight as to when and how to best contact our elected representatives. (Attached is a picture of Todd and some of our attendees.) Most bills that are introduced in the legislature come from constitutent ideas. Each House member can introduce up to 3 bills per session, but each Senate member has no limit on the number of bills he/she can introduce! Every bill must have a companion bill from the other side. Every bill must go through committees and get approvals along the way. Eventually, when the House Bill and Senate Bill are approved, the bill lands on the governor's desk where he has the option to sign or veto the bill.... Read more →

Facebook APP privacy loopholes can damage your public reputation

I posted this on Facebook today. WARNING about using FB apps: Recently three well known public personalities in Lake County have signed up for Facebook apps which then posted on my Wall (and I assume all their friends) 1) what music (every song) one person was listening to (Spotify app) during work hours, and 2) that two others TODAY read an article using the Washington Post "Social Reader" app titled "4 Things you do that kill her sex drive". (For real). Facebook and their apps don't care about your reputation or privacy, so don't use ANY Facebook app without completely understanding what they will tell others about your activities on the internet when you use their app. The same goes for Google. AND, don't use the Facebook login on a website, because then they collect and might post whatever you looked at on another website., or you will see ads on your website for something you don't want showing on your page. THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR PRIVACY OR DAMAGING YOUR PERSONAL REPUTATION. Be sure to restrict all privacy "connections" between Facebook and any other site, or your actions on Facebook could show up in an ad when you view... Read more →