Tavares, FL Mon., Jan 13, 2014
The Lake County Board of supervisors have been off for about a month, and you can find their agenda here, and also the detailed 600+ page “packet”:
http://lakecountyfl.suiteonemedia.com/web/home.aspx <<< I find it doesn’t work with Firefox, so use Internet Explorer
This is a quick overview of issues:
This meeting includes an initial period for awards, which will probably take 15 minutes.
Tab 5.03 and 5.05 - Two recent County audit reports are not described as such in the agenda. The Court Clerk’s Internal Auditor issued TWO audits of County operations, and magically they are not attached to the agenda and the descriptions don’t even say they are audits. One is an audit of “ARRA Grant Reporting” and you can find it here: http://lakecountyfl.suiteonemedia.com/web/home.aspx
The other audit is about the BCC Web Server / Application Security, but is also not on the agenda or on the Court Clerk’s website, so I obtained it from the Auditor and attached it here:
Download 2014-01-14 Audit BCC-112 BCC Web Server-Application Security
I will write articles about these soon.
This continues a pattern where staff and the Board are avoiding public awareness of recent audits and is a bad trend of reducing transparency. There were two earlier ones that were never brought to the Board for discussion, and these two are on the consent agenda and not even attached. The Board needs to have ALL of them discussed at a workshop. There are repeating patterns of control problems and the Board needs to stop avoiding them.
Tab 6 – Lynx is asking for rate hikes for some bus routes.
Tab 20 – Asks approval for attorney rates for outside attorneys. I attached it here so you know how much is going out to attorneys on an hourly basis:
Download 2014-01-14 Tab 20 2013-2014 Attorney Rates Table_10-1-13
Tab 21 – This is a “public hearing” for the board to approve an ordnance RENEWING 1 and 2 cent local option fuel taxes without any public vote or disclosure of prior spending uses or future spending uses. So, unless you show up at the meeting and challenge this, these taxes will be renewed for another 29 YEARS. The problem I have is there is no reporting of what the prior funds were spent on, or HOW MUCH was spent on each category of "transportation" expenses so the public can comment on direction for future funds. The Board just seems to be saying "we need it" without justifying the new taxes. The ordnance will continue to require the funds be spent on "Transportation" but no specifics. Thus I assume the funds it could be siphoned off for politically correct uses not related to roads like trails, railroads or expensive roundabouts, etc. AND, what is ludicrous, they don’t show prior collections over the years, and say “fiscal impact cannot be determined at this time”. The Board should have a public workshop explaining where all prior funds from these taxes were used and get public input if they were the correct priorities.
Tab 22 – An economic outlook report, which should be interesting.
Tab 23 – Update on three fire stations AND a requested approval for a cost sharing agreement between Lake County & Groveland for fire and emergency services. This should exist in the entire county, but at least they are doing it with Groveland. This means the CLOSEST fire or emergency response unit will go fires or emergencies in Groveland or the County.
Tab 24 – Discussion on a proposed ordinance to control sales of synthetic meth and other drugs. The description fails to say an ordinance is proposed, but it is, and is attached to the packet.
Tab 25 – Lake County School Board wants the County to pay for some “courtesy” school bus costs in the Minneola area. The county doesn’t want to. There are many attachments and letters to this item in the packet. This is the issue that is like the BLOB, it is eating up the county and school board time.
That’s all I have at this point.
Vance Jochim
Lake County Fiscal Rangers
Chief Fiscal Watchdog
