Fiscal Rangers

Lake County Garbage Gate Fiasco Continues - WCA trash firm fails to pickup on scheduled day AGAIN

Tavares, FL Lake County, FL Nov. 29, 2014 by Vance Jochim Lake Countians GarbageGate Update - The Jimmie/Sean/Welton Garbage Gate fiasco continues... at least in my unincorporated Lake County neighborhood. Those Commissioners voted for this particular NEW method and vendors collecting the trash. My County selected trash collection firm, WCA, failed once again to pickup trash on the correct day. Thursday is my normal trash pickup day, but the published "Holiday" service schedule for Lake County trash pickup (unincorporated) says they won't pick up trash that day, but that Friday would be a normal collection day. The County published "Holiday" schedule of County services ALSO says Friday after Thanksgiving is a normal trash pickup day. So, everyone put out their trash bin and their recycling bin Thursday night for Friday pickup. My neighbor even left his relatives in Tampa early to get back and put the trash out. But the trash bins were still sitting there full of cat poop and garbage as of 7am this Saturday morning. Yup, even though the County issued a press release saying that folks with a Thursday pickup date would have their trash collected on Friday, nothing happened. So, the ignored Lake County trash... Read more →

Lake County, FL Legislative Delegation to hear agencies, public and Common Core Opponents on Dec. 2

Tavares, FL Nov. 27, 2014 Lake County, FL has five FL legislators who are on the Lake County Legislators Delegation, and they are having their annual open public hearing in Leesburg, FL on Dec. 2 at Lake Sumter State College in the Fine Arts Auditorium at 1-5pm (NOT the Magnolia room). If you can, I encourage you to attend the meeting to see your local FL legislators and how they react to the issues proposed by public input speakers. Except for campaign forums, this may be the only time you see some of them. They are" Rep. Larry Metz, Chair and organizer of this delegation meeting Rep. Jennifer Sullivan (just elected) Rep. Marlene O'Toole (Villages area) Sen. Alan Hays Sen. Dorothy Hukill Historically, these annual meetings were normally held during the day to hear a parade of local government agencies plea for funds or legislation. In recent years, other citizens have shown up to get 3 minutes of public input time before the delegation to make a pitch about an issue, or support another speaker. Here is an earlier Delegation forum on Jan 4, 2013 chaired by Alan Hays. I will video the meeting and upload the video to the... Read more →

SHOCKING - Daily Commercial NOW says the Lake County, FL County Commission Should Review the Budget

Yes, today the Lake County, FL newspaper, the Daily Commercial, had both a front page article AND an "OurVoice" editorial saying NOW the County Board, after raising taxes by almost 14%, should "get serious about your budget". This article contains a review of a newspaper article, an editorial and my specific responses to the points in them. Read more →

Local Government Fraud Alert: County Finance staffer in Tennessee embezzled $145,000 from Jefferson County, TN funds from 2011 to 2014

Local Government Fraud Alert: County Finance staffer embezzled $145,000 from Jefferson County, TN funds from 2011 to 2014 Read more →

Election Recommendations and News of School and County Board meetings this week

Tavares, FL Nov. 3, 2014 This post covers several issues: ( Updated at 2pm to fix some typos and add clarifications) - Election recommendations. Tomorrow is election day, so my recommendations are at the BOTTOM of this document - If you have NOT voted, be sure to do so tomorrow. I also include the Lake County Republican Party voter guide as an attachment. - Tomorrow's Lake County Board meeting is canceled: The Lake County Board of Commissioners (BCC) website today showed a meeting scheduled for tomorrow on their website, but it was canceled at a prior meeting. However, they did not send out update notices to their email list nor did they post the cancellation on the website. So, no meeting tomorrow, and I let them know in clear terms they need to keep the website updated and should ALWAYS send out update and cancel notices when they occur. I also told them about a programming error where if staff remove a linked document, there is no "error trapping" and the user gets an cryptic technical error notice rather than one written for users with a contact for solving the problem. The problem is there is an outside software firm... Read more →