Fiscal Rangers

Updated Jan 15, 2023: Jan. 9, - Lake County, FL Legislators' Delegation meeting in Leesburg - video uploaded and link added

Updated Jan 15, 2023: The video links were added for this meeting for the Monday, Jan. 9, 2023, Lake County FL Legislative Delegation, which is the four FL legislators representing Lake County, FL and they will decide on a local law about Rural Protection Areas, as well as listen to 35+ citizens, agency reps and community groups asking for support or funding for their projects or issues. Read more →

Lake County, FL contracted hauler keeps missing recycling pickups - should the County adopt a new logo of an overflowing trash can?

A garbage hauler newly contracted by the Lake County, FL government has missed at least five recycling pickup runs in my County residential area, and we discuss the issue. Read more →

Tomorrow, Tuesday, Nov 22 is the Investiture of the two re-elected Lake County, FL Board members

This is a quick commentary on the investiture of two re-elected Lake County, FL County Commissioners, Leslie Campione and Sean Parks. In addition, I make a recommendation who should be selected on Dec. 6th as the next Chair of the Lake County Board. Read more →

Lake County Issues Plans for improving yard waste and garbage collection timeliness

Lake County has announced action steps to speed up collection of yard waste and garbage due to delays caused by Hurricane Ian cleanup tasks. This is for the Lake County residents, and City Residents are affected separately by their city trash hauling operations. Before Hurricane Ian, I gave public input at the County Board meeting about missed trash pickups after finding out the staff had no method to track hauler follow ups when a pickup was missed and complaint filed with the County. "Managers" in government need to "MANAGE" actions under them with status reports etc. and not just hope a contractor like a hauler follows up on a complaint. When residents send a complaint about missed garbage pickups, the County needs to TRACK such complaints to completion like IT departments do with incident reporting and status tracking software. Not doing so is in my mind management malpractice. As of Nov. 6, my yard waste trash has been sitting now in my driveway for THIRTEEN days. I have resulted in putting some of it in the normal garbage bins which ARE picked up on the assigned date (Fridays). If Lake County misses collecting your yard waste or garbage, send an... Read more →

Century Link attempts illegal underground fiber optic cable installation in my neighborhood.

Century Link attempts illegal underground fiber optic cable installation in my neighborhood but we caught them. Read more →

New Research Report on Florida's "Election Syndicate" of Democrat & China connected vendors

Pete Antonacci speaking recently about Florida election integrity before he died mysteriously. This devastating expose report below on Florida voting system loopholes is from researcher and data analyst Kris Jurski of The-Peoples-Audit.org who I have covered before and uploaded videos of him at Rumble.com/FiscalRangers. This information calls into question the "integrity" of Florida's voting system espoused by Gov. Ron DeSantis. Pictured is the recently deceased Director of the Florida Office of Election Crimes and Security, Pete Antonacci, who still has not been replaced. Is that "Office" all a shiny object to distract voters from the evidence shown below by Kris Jurski? WATCH the new Catching Fire News video linked below that features Kris Jurski and also READ the report below. Then use your anger to share this with others and call or email your Florida elected officials. Vance Jochim - FiscalRangers.com Published Oct. 14, 2022 ================================================= The webpage for this report is: https://www.fiscalrangers.com/2022/10/new-research-report-on-floridas-election-syndicate-of-democrat-china-connected-vendors.html Subject: Florida Election Syndicate With less than 30 days left before this crucial election, this video is a must watch: https://rumble.com/v1nsn8o-floridas-election-syndicate.html You would assume that Florida ballots, especially ready-to-mail ballots, were all done locally with the direct supervision of your local SOE, but you would be very... Read more →

Routine Yard Waste pickup in Lake County, FL areas has been delayed due to Hurricane Ian'

Here is info on why Lake County, FL yard waste haulers are not picking up routine yard waste - Oct. 13, 2022. Read more →

Florida & Lake County, FL Election Fraud expert Kris Jurski on CatchingFireNews vlog.

IT Election fraud expert Kris Jurski explains on Catching Fire News how an analysis of Florida State and Lake County, FL election data shows possible thousands in unexplained or fake votes. Kris is a member of the Lake County, FL Election Integrity & Security Committee. Read more →

New May 15, 2022 Biden Affordable Housing Action Plan described by Realtor vlog in Louisiana

On May 15, 2022, the Biden Administration announced an Affordable Housing Action Plan, and this post describes it via a video, plus links and observations. Read more →

Is your County Supervisor of Elections Intelligent Enough to Prevent Phishing attempts to get office logins?

Election thieves are targeting Superintendents of Elections and employees with fake emails in phishing attempts to get their office login info. Are Florida SOEs smart enough to prevent their logins being hijacked? This article explains it and the notice sent out by the FBI warning them. And, HERE is the official FBI notice to SOE's. The question is, is your Florida SOE and staff intelligent enough to avoid such phishing attempts to get their password? In my opinion, as a retired information systems auditor and anti-corruption manager, I personally do not think so. Vance Jochim FiscalRangers.com FiscalRangers@gmail.com Apr. 4, 2022 Read more →

Florida 2020 voter registration database analysis shows questionable fluctuations. Did ERIC Cause it?

2020 Florida voter registration analysis and questionable fluctuations in different party registration volumes are shown in this 10-minute video of the Florida statewide voter registration database. Also, could there be a pattern of fake registrations? Speculation is that Florida's membership in "ERIC" may be the reason. Go to the Rumble channel to see the 10 minute video. Vance Jochim FiscalRangers.com 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 →

We interview Tom Vail about apparent manipulation of Florida Voter Registrations and Vote Counts

We interviewed Tom Vail, a vote integrity activist in Lake County, FL about evidence uncovered from analysis of Florida's 2020 elections vote dtabase (15-million voters) and suspicious trends found in voter registration data as well as mysterious appearance of Democrat and NPA registrations to match Republican counts. Then there was the database analysis showing ALL Florida addressses where more than 10 voters were registered, with some having 9000 or more registered voters to a single adddress. FAKE???? Read more →

Leesburg, FL Residents: Two upcoming meetings you need to know about

Two Leesburg, FL City Council meetings are coming up (Dec. 30, 2021 & Jan. 3, 2022) without any details on their purpose. Both may include discussions relatedd to rampant development annexations by the City Council of Leesburg without regard to traffic gridlock that may result. As of Dec. 27, 2021, there is no online agenda for the Jan. 3rd meeting, and the Dec. 30 agenda only says each side will give presentations. 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 →

Should Lake County, FL or local cities get FREE Federal $ and create their own local internet broadband utility?

Many cities are creating their onw municipal internet broadband utilities, and even Federal funds can pay for it as we explain.' Read more →

Lake County, FL watchdog blog FiscalRangers.com launches initiative to outsource city functions to control costs

Most cities in Lake County, FL keep escalating wage, benefit and pension costs each year, Thus this Lake County, FL fiscal watchdog is launching an initiative to demand cities start outsourcing various functions to control escalating costs. The day of constantly passing through 10% benefit costs and wages twice the CPI need to stop because increasing house valuations, plus high millage rates may cause some residents to lose homes due to excessive property tax bills. Most cities don't use performance metrics like businesses to identify excess spending, and that is needed also. Read more →

Lake County, FL has no public law library when most other Florida counties have one

The Lake County, FL Board of County Commissioners needs to refund and re-implement a public Law Library for residents like most other Florida counties have. Read more →

REDUCE YOUR Lake County, FL Property Taxes by 50% by buying property in a low tax Lake County city

Buyers of residential, rental or commercial property in Lake County, FL can SAVE 50% on property taxes if they pick the right, low millage rate city in Lake County. This article describes the 2020 millage rates for all 14 cities plus the unincorporated Lake County areas so you can decide to buy in a LOW or HIGH property tax location. Read more →

Will your local City or County agency be hit with ransomware like Baltimore, costing $18-million?

Will your local city or county government agency get hit with ransomware like Baltimore, MD and then their School District a year later? Read this and pass it on to your local government council or board to educate them and ask for a public hearing on whether they are vulnerable or not. Read more →

Lake County, FL Board of Commissioners meets Tuesday, Nov. 10 and spends bundles of money & other civic actions

The Lake County, FL Board of Commissioners is meeting at 9am on Nov. 10, 2020 and we provide a summary of what to expect. You can watch it online. Read more →

My Comments about the voting site process in Lake County, FL

My commentary about the onsite voting process in Lake County, FL. Read more →

Lake County, FL Board to have final millage and budget hearing tomorrow, Sept. 29, 2020

The Lake County, FL Board is having the final State required meeting to approve millage rates and budgets which will result in higher property taxes due to higher valuations. We provide the meeting details and discuss the issue. Read more →

How Lake County, FL elected officials are flimflamming property taxpayers

A commentary in the Orlando Sentinel blasted most local City Councils and the County Board for trying to say they reduced property tax millage rates, but since they did not reduce them to the rollback rate, total actual taxes will go up significantly once those officials vote in September to NOT approve rollback rates. Confusing? Yes, so read my article and the linked commentary by Lauren Ritchie. Read more →

Don't Vote Early - Wait Until You See who mails out nasty mailers, then choose

Lake County Voters should delay their voting in the Lake County primary elections until closer to the final voting day. They need to do that to see if anyone sends out negative mailer hit pieces that may see unethical or inaccurate before finally deciding who to vote for. We point out two candidate races where negative mailers have already been mailed out, and who in our opinion "might" be advising them. Read more →

Doug Shields is running for Lake County, FL County Commission and here is our video.

This introductory video of Doug Shields, candidate for the Lake County, FL County Commission, District 1 was made at the Lake County Republican Party HQ on July 31, 2020 during their periodic "Coffee with the Republican Candidates" event. Mr. Shields is running against incumbent Tim Sullivan, and he has mailed out controversial mailers attacking Sullivan that Sullivan has rejected as being inaccurate. Candidate Sullivan has issued a rebuttal HERE. We don't like hit piece mailers so you need to see the rebuttal also. Doug's official candidate website is: https://shieldsforlake.com/ His Facebook page is: https://www.facebook.com/Shieldsforlake/ Campaign email: shieldsforlake@gmail.com Look for other Lake County, FL area election candidate videos on this FiscalRangersFlorida YouTube channel. Additionally, you can find news on the elections and other Lake County government agency watchdog issues on our FiscalRangers.com blog and on our FiscalRangersLakeCounty Facebook Group. Video by Lake County, FL Fiscal Watchdog blogger Vance Jochim of FiscalRangers.com. The short link to this video is: https://youtu.be/_IfGLfNquOY Length of video is: 29 minutes Read more →

Questionable Voting Ballots received in the Mail? What to do.

Florida voters are now receiving their primary voting ballots in the mail for the August 18 primary vote. Some ballots might be wrong, altered or duplicated, and we tell you what to do. 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 →

Lake County, FL getting ready to open businesses up again

Lake County, FL County officials and staff are preparing for an expected Florida Governor announcement to let businesses open again. But Leftist counties nearby are pressuring the conservative counties not to do so. Watch the Lake County, FL website for news and a new Business Guide for re-0pening ( I have seen the mockup web page). Read more →

Lake County, FL listed as one of 10 Florida Counties to suffer most downturn due to Chinese Virus

An Orlando Weekly article cites a study saying Lake County, FL is one of the 10 Florida Counties that may suffer the most bankruptcies from the Covid-19 crisis. Read more →

Lake County, FL Business Owners suffering economically from the virus caused downturn

The Lake County, FL economic development staff issued a press release on initiatives they are working on to help local businesses. READ it here: https://www.lakecountyfl.gov/news_releases/news_release.aspx?id=3555 "The Lake County Agency for Economic Prosperity wants to make local businesses aware of the resources available to help mitigate the economic impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)." Vance Jochim FiscalRangers.com 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 →

Planned Statue of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune described by Artist Nilda Comas at Lake County Historical Society Feb. 6, 2020.

The artist, Nilda Comas, creating an 8 foot marble statue of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune for the National Statuary Hall in Washington DC gave a presentation on the statue creation and design process at the Lake County, FL Historical Society on Feb. 6, 2020 in Tavares, FL. Links to a short video and more pictures are included. Read more →

Lake County, FL Board reduces COUNTY Business tax to ZERO over three years

Hooray! The Lake County, FL Board has voted to reduce the COUNTY business tax in increments to ZERO over three years! It was a useless tax that just went into the general fund and did not benefit businesses like the Tourism Development Tax does. Now cities need to do the same. Kudos to Lake County Tax Collector David W. Jordan Lake County Tax Collector for pushing this forward. Vance Jochim 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 →

Confederate Statue Removal? Some states are outlawing it and other cities are leaving them

Democrats, in order to stir up racial division, have launched protests to remove Confederate statues across the country. However, instead of protests and either removing or keeping a statue, a third alternative, "Contextualizing" has evolved and this article describes how it is being implemented to address issues rather than the Democrat objective of stirring hate by destroying history. Read more →

Florida Standards (Common Core) Listening Tour skips Lake, Orange, Sumter, Polk & Marion County! WHY?

The Florida Dept. of Education is conducting a review of the Common Core based Florida Education Standards. They are having a listening tour in parts of Florida, but skipping Lake, Orange, Polk, Sumter & Marion Counties. Why? We provide links to information and the press release but have no answer why they are skipping those counties. But we include links where parents can go online and review the second draft of proposed new standards and submit comments. 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 →

Lake County, FL Commissioner Leslie Campione provides background on proposed millage rate

Lake County Commissioner Leslie Campione responds to criticism of the proposed property tax millage rate for 2019. 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 →

FEMA Promises to Send $7-million in Hurricane Damage Reimbursement to Lake County by August

FEMA has agreed to send an expected $7-million in Hurricane Irma damage reimbursement funds to Lake County, FL by August after efforts by Board Chair Leslie Campione. Read more →

Lake County, FL County Commissioner Wendy Breeden visits the Republican Office for coffee and comments

The Lake County, FL Republicans held a coffee meeting today at the REC Tavares, FL HQ with Lake County Commissioner Wendy Breeden who shared secrets about the County Government. Read more →

More Lake County, FL Cities and government agencies need to provide Live or uploaded meeting videos!

Local cities and government agencies in Florida, including Lake County, FL, are reducing public transparency by removing most published documents, even for upcoming meeting agendas and staff packets, or annual financial reports or budgets. They are doing it to avoid nuisance lawsuits by roving bands of attorneys suing them for not spending thousands of taxpayer dollars to comply with Federal ADA laws related to "accessibility" for sight and hearing limited users. Read more →

Lake County, FL County Commissioner Leslie Campione Provides Facts About Proposed H-2A FarmWorker Dormitory near Eustis, FL

Here is an analysis by Lake County, FL County Commissioner Leslie Campione on the proposed 50 room FarmWorker H2A housing dormitory on a 5-acre lot in an agricultural area north of Eustis, FL.  Neighbors have protested this contentious issue which will come to the Lake County, FL Board on May 21 for a decision. Read more →

MedMen Medical Marijuana Pot Growers in Eustis, FL Anger Neighbors Over Excessive Industrial Noise

MedMen Medical Marijuana Pot Growers in Eustis, FL Anger Neighbors Over Excessive Industrial Noise Read more →

A Florida homeowner's guide for coping with surprise real estate developments next door.

Florida homeowners may be blindsided by developer requests for questionable projects next to them like the proposed 4-story rental apartment complex on the shores of Lake Saunders near Tavares, FL next to the single story, single family residences. So we created a 36 minute Florida Homeowners guide to the land development process to understand how to make your voice heard or oppose outlandish land use developments. 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 →

60 Local Government Employees based in Tavares, FL Earned $100k or more in 2017 per OpenTheBooks.org database

A government spending watchdog, OpenTheBooks.org, tracks wasteful government programs and also tracks local, state and Federal employee wages over $100k. We examined their reports for local cities in the Lake County area, and found 60 employees working in the Tavares, FL area for government that earned over $100k. OpenTheBooks.org also launched an initiative to encourage the Congress to launch a "War on Waste" by listing wasteful, stupid Federal programs and asking the government to publish budget details for transparency, and then eliminate the uncovered, wasteful programs. Read more →