Fiscal Rangers

Two Lake County, FL Election Hob Nobs hold election straw polls this week in Clermont & Leesburg

Tomorrow, Monday, Aug. 8th, 2022 and on Tuesday, Aug. 9th, there are two election "Hob Nobs" run by local Chambers of Commerce to let the public meet and greet all local election candidates and to vote for them in a straw poll that is administered by the Lake County Supv. of Elections. We provide details and encourage Lake County, FL voters to attend and "vote" in a straw poll to support their favored candidates. Read more →

Got Septic? New Distributed community Septic System discussed at Lake County, FL Board meeting March 22, 2022

Got Septic? If you have a septic tank or considering a replacement, or buying a new home outside city limits, you need water and sewage connections. A new "Septic to Distributed System" method for new homes and small developments (50 homes per system) that do not have direct access to city sewage systems was discussed at yesterday's (Mar. 22, 2022) Lake County Board meeting. You can watch the tab 30 agenda item meeting video by going to the Lake County website, clicking and scrolling to about 1 hour, 55 minutes and watch it, plus you can click the agenda tab and scroll to tab 30 to see the agenda documents. This new system was solicited by the Lake County Board to reduce pressure for developers to annex into cities and approve HIGH-density homes to justify costs for city proviced sewer pipelines. Instead, they found a vendor ( http://www.onsyte.com/ ) that can provide small, stand-alone, more advanced community septic systems. They also had an earlier presentation by the vendor several months ago. They were the only ones to respond to a request for proposal. They are not discussing mandating these for older homes with septic tanks (at this time). Both Lake... Read more →

Lake County, FL residents living on canals - an update and history of dredging and issues

Many canals in Lake County, FL are being mucked up due to inaction by Lake County Government or the St. John's River Water Management District or the Lake County Water Authority. Some recent bills have funded dredging and here is canal activist Linda Moss;e overview of history and issues. Read more →

Our video interview with Keith Farner, re-election candidate for Lake County Water Authority (LCWA)

Keith Farner is running for re-election for the Board of the Lake County, FL Water Authority (LCWA). This is our overview and link to our interview video. Read more →

Flagler County, FL - half the population of Lake County, predicts $1.2-million DROP in sales tax revenue

Flagler County, FL announced Pandemic impacts on sales tax revenues, and Lake County, FL might be affected as much or more Read more →

What happens to local city and county cash flow if Florida cuts sales taxes like the UK just did to cope with the Wuhan Virus?

The UK just reduced their VAT, or national sales tax, to zero for awhile. What happens if Florida does the same, or the state government reduces tax revenues sent to local governments due to the Wuhan virus crisis? Will we go through layoffs and increased property taxes in Florida and Lake County? Read more →

Concerned about Water Quality in Lake County, FL's 1200 named lakes? Read this.

Get some info on water quality of lakes in Lake County, FL. The Lake County Water Authority had a meeting and among other things discussed reasons for Algal blooms in Lake Minneola. Read more →

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis needs to fix his convoluted Appointments Process

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis needs to clean up the obtuse appointments process he inherited. I really believe it was carried from a prior Democrat and is a deep state operation to only let insiders get information on openings, criteria and appointments. Did Charlie Crist holdovers design this clutterd system? See my video and recommendations to clean up the process. Read more →

Residents living on Lake County, FL Canals - read this about funding for needed canal dredging

Residents on private canals in Lake County, FL need to read this. A new funding process is being considered by the Lake County Board to allow residents to tax themselves over 10 years to fund needed dredging of their canals. Read more →

The new Lake County 2019/2020 Property Tax TRIM Notices are Out - and you need to analyze them

The 2019-20 Lake County, FL property tax TRIM notices are out. We provide an example and some analysis, and tips how to analyze YOUR rates to understand if hidden increases are included. Read more →

Tavares, FL property owners should attend this budget workshop, or open your wallet for higher taxes

Tavares, FL residents need to read this about pending millage rate tax hikes at a City Council workshop on July 24, 2019 at 4pm. These issues of escalating taxes are affecting ALL city and county residents in Lake County and the rest of Florida. If you don't act now, then hold out your wallet for tax day. Read more →

Hydrilla Treatment Priorities for Lake Harris Chain of Lakes in Lake County, FL Discussed April 2, 2019

The Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission (FWC) held a public meeting on April 2, 2019, in Tavares, FL for citizens to "vote" on areas to receive priority treatment to control Hydrilla in the Harris Chain of Lakes in Lake County, FL. Citizens added colored dots to maps of the lakes to indicate priority treatment areas. This video includes the full meeting and we listed all the questions and answers during the Q&A session. Read more →

The Process inherited by the new Florida Governor to process appointments is convoluted and non-transparent!

We created a watchdog blog video of the convoluted, confusing and non-transparent process used by the Florida Governor's Appointments office to find filled and vacant positions and apply for them. Watch it - it took us 44 minutes to explain the whole bureaucratic "we always have done it this way" process. Read more →

Federal & Florida ADA Compliance laws are wrecking local government transparency and incurring huge costs

Tavares, FL March 11, 2019 Federal and Florida regulations on compliance with the American Disabilities Act (ADA) are causing excess costs and reduced public transparency over local government meeting videos, agendas, budgets and even annual financial reports (CAFR's). Essentially, some scummy lawyers found that ADA requirements can be interpreted to require that any local government has to provide online information in a format that can be read by ADA software tools used by the disabled, such as vision limited or hearing limited. Apparently, the tools use screen "scanning" to find text or picture captions that can then be converted to audio so the disabled can "read" or "hear" the online information. We wrote an earlier story about this in January 2019 HERE, after the Orlando Sentinel published a story about it. It contains more about the scummy lawsuits, so I did not repeat it here. The Jan. 6, 2019 Orlando Sentinel story is here. And very few local governments have the funds to revamp their websites and file systems to comply with the lawsuit demands. Now, a city like Orlando could afford to get the software and modify all their files so they can be read by the ADA tools,... Read more →

Why doesn't Lake County, FL have a member on the Florida Assoc. of Counties Water Policy Committee?

The Florida Association of Counties (FAC) has a water policy committee. Guess what, Lake County, FL has NO REPRESENTATION ON THE COMMITTEE. Here is a link showing 30+ counties that DO HAVE a rep on the committee. Read more →

Transparency over local government meeting agendas, minutes, videos, etc. is being damaged by ADA compliance lawsuits

Local governments like cities are being sued because their websites are not completely designed to comply with ADA requirements that were written before the internet was created.  For instance, cities cannot post meeting videos if they don't incur the expense to provide captions that software for the blind or deaf can read and translate so they can understand it.  Thus the benefit of transparency for 97% of the populations are shut down for 3% who complain. Read more →

Today's Lake County, FL Board gets earful about St. John's River Water Management District plans to move 250,000 truckloads of sand.

Tavares, FL July 10, 2018 Today, I was at the Lake County Board meeting, and tab 39 was a big discussion about whether the St. John's River Water Management District would be allowed to start moving sand from a conservation area they own in Lake County resulting an estimated 330,000 truck trips over 5 years or 200-250 truckloads a day on two minor road used by residents. After many public comments by affected residents, the Board voted to decide on an ordinance at a future meeting that would NOT allow trucks over 10 tons to traverse either of the two rural roads which are not designed for such heavy traffic. Lots of cheering. This whole fiasco came up because the SJRWMD Board decided to authorize selling the sand to make $1.4-million while (according to residents) decimating wildlife, quiet, road safety, etc. I gave public input about the little known fact that the LJRWMD is a multi-county regional system where Board members are appointed by the Governor (not elected) and Lake County has NOT had a representative on their board since the 1970's. Two insiders told me it was because high political contributors got the positions and apparently no one in... Read more →