District Skimmed $387,000
The State of Florida Auditor General’s office released its findings and recommendations this week from its Operational Audit (click to view) of the Lake County District School Board. The audit found that the district skimmed $387,000 of impact fee monies for non-capital expenditures, such as “gaming curriculum, course software, sensor bundles, and teachers guide” during the period of June-September, 2011. The misappropriations of the Impact Fees Fund are detailed in the report’s Finding No. 8. The total report reflects the characteristics of a horribly mismanaged school district.
For clarification, impact fees were created by the state of Florida, and the appropriation of these fees is limited to the following definition: “Impact fees must be used solely for the purpose of providing growth-necessitated capital improvements to educational and ancillary plants of the education system.” Under state statute, impact fees cannot be used for school operations or maintenance because the funds are designed to create student stations. Ad Valorem taxes (regular school property taxes) are the funding mechanism for operations and maintenance.
We Warned Them
In the June 16, 2011, edition of The Right Side of the Lake (click the link), we alerted our readers about the Lake County School District’s purchase of 1,750 iPads for nearly $700,000. We then sounded the alarm about the district’s illegal use of School Impact Fees after discussing the issue with the Lake County School District’s Chief Financial Officer Carol MacLeod and Communications Officer Chris Patton. We pointed out that impact fees could not be used for operational expense items. Well, like most bureaucrats thirsting to spend a dollar, they justified the money shift. In that article. we wrote the following:
Here is the issue: By Florida Statute, School Impact Fees cannot be used for operations or maintenance; School Impact Fees must be used for basic brick and mortar to build student stations. If the 1,750 iPads for the new Minneola High School were purchased with capital funds derived from School Impact Fees, then this purchase is a violation of Florida Statute, and it opens up Pandora’s Box as to other purchases that have been illegally made from collected School Impact Fees.
Based on the district’s new Minneola High School iPad Student Policy, there’s no doubt these 1,750 iPads are being used as learning tools in the operation of the new MHS (click here to view policy). If these funds were derived from School Impact Fees then CFO MacLeod needs to state those facts, and a thorough audit of how and where School Impact Fee money is being spent needs to occur. We are very concerned School Impact Fees may have become the school district’s slush fund.
We stand behind our statement: School Impact Fees have become the slush fund for the Lake County School District.
More Serious Questions
The State of Florida General Auditor’s Finding No. 8 is just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve been told by sources close to the school district that other operational items were paid for by School Impact Fee revenues; even worse, there has been a conscientious effort to cover up the facts. If true, this is fraud.
The big concern is that the Lake County School District may have to pay back the fraudulently used School Impact Fee amounts, which will be catastrophic for the district’s budget. The title of The Right Side of the Lake detailing this misappropriation of School Impact Fees was “Meet Your New Teacher at Minneola High” with a picture of an iPad next to the headline. If the district is forced to repay these School Impact Fee monies, then that might come true, as teachers and personnel will have to be let go to pay for this major foul-up.
If the State of Florida General Auditor’s Finding No. 8 on School Impact Fees is upheld, then it’s time for heads to roll, starting with the Chief Financial Officer and Communications Officer. If this is the best financial and technical advice these two can provide the Lake County School Board and Superintendent, then it’s time for a change.
Adding Salt to the Wound
Last week, Lake County citizens found out that the Lake County School District is ranked 44 out of 67 school districts by the State of Florida Department of Education. Lake County’s two neighboring counties, Sumter and Seminole, are ranked in the top ten with “A” ratings. It would be different if the citizens of this county hadn’t paid so much money for top schools; however, when the district is sitting on a half billion dollars in debt, this is a bitter pill to swallow.
Hear from Two School Board Members Next Week
Beginning Tuesday (January 31, 2012), The Right Side of the Lake will hold an online forum between two current school board members who are now running for the District 2 seat because of redistricting. School Board Members Rosanne Brandeburg and Jim Miller were asked a series of very tough questions about the Lake County School District. Starting next week, you can see where they stand. It will be a multiple-day release, so you can digest their answers without being overwhelmed. This is a new format we hope to use more during the upcoming election season. Be sure to tell your friends and have them sign up for the newsletter to read our online forum.
This year, getting the pro-growth conservative message is more important than ever before. Please share The Right Side of the Lake with everyone on your contact list and please encourage your friends and family to sign up for this free newsletter.
Citizens for Better Government, L.L.C. would like to invite you to “Like Us” on our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/rightsideofthelake, and by doing so you will be a part of Lake County’s number one conservative online network.
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The Building bonanza presently running at over 1/2 a BILLION was a big reason. The board had to OWN the superintendant, they didn’t have time for questions asked by an uubridled super which would untimately become public information,
All the while Jimmy was screaming and hollering at Anna Cowin he and the rest of the board were cutting deals with the building projects. Now the debt service is overwhemling and like Ben Stein said on Fox last night it’s just a matter of time before the US goes bankrupt on its debt, likewise it’s just a matter of time before Lake Schools and Lake Government goes bankrupt as well. When that happens all the blood suckers will run for the hills. Any culture of corruption always takes away as much people power as possible before they take it all.
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So why did we have to go to an unelected superintendent? We inept leadership now one with a contract and whose loyalty is to the school board not the voters.
Time to revert to an elected School leader, just not Anna.
I’ll admit teachers have been a huge problem for over 40 years now. But I doubt you could be that stupid and make it to RETARDment, The peasants ain’t stupid we had to do like Abraham Lincoln and study at night by an oil lamp, but we finally got it, we couldn’t learn anything in the daytime with you government paid teachers and your SEIU mentalities and the administration flipping money from pockets to pockets..
Might be kind of important but heck I got no idea. Sorry. Only thing i got was the ‘nose up the butt’ ???? Just a Old Retired Teacher
If no one could figure out that statement you wouldn’t have wasted your time trying to unspin it.
You corrupticans have finally figured out we ain’t as stupid as you painted us to be!
One thing for sure whom ever wrote it ain’t got their nose up the butts of the culture of corruption tha thinks the run central Florida. Dad Gum; there is finally a local media that can’t control and they can’t stand it! This one looks like a Lt. David Pelton rebuttal. If it is; hey David have you neen arresting any fellow deputy sheriff’s on fradulent victim affadavit’s created on the orders of Borders lately? Leaks! Yea! you have got plenty of them, even some who were former supporters of this regime are sick and tired of the missing money and the human abuse.
Herman Cain don’t like corruption either. Yea! They took him down but they have not silenced him and they never will! Now they are spending all their money to get their man Rommney elected just in case the people won’t elect their puppet Obama they’ll have another one almost like him..
Hey “Name Say What”, that is a great title to your post because no one has a clue about this writing you decided to grace us with and how it might even remotely refer to “Lake Auditor Sides With Us on School Impact Fees”. Why don’t you fill us in? All I get is that you left on a flight and pooped all over yourself and now want someone else to **** on you and maybe the Rainbow People will help, is that it?
____________________________ QUOTE ____________________________
Welcome to this flight originating at Leesburg international Airport Lake County, Florida located directly between the jewish owned and controlled Disney empire and the Morse family owned and controlled Villages. Please fasten your seat belts. The movie of the day is “suck up and accept the fact that we control everything except your bowels.” Please understand if you choose to use your bowels without our permission we may also excercise our option to control that body function as well.
Once you have signed into our establishment and agreed to pay for all the free ammenities we have provided to you we will henceforth control all of your reactions concerning questions regarding how great you think we are. You will read the Villages Sun and you will believe every word you read. At no time will you bare false witness to any IRS agent the fact that you know we are screwing every homeowner in the villages with our illegal taxing districts. Damn, just thinking about this makes me want to go join those Rainbow people at Alexander Springs. Yes, I am a ignorant moron, that’s why try to fit in and write this stupid ****.
______________________ END QUOTE ______________________
(Sounds like Herman Cain wrote this…)
Step 1. Get the entire board to resign and replace them with something other than more bobble-heads. Brandenburg is a complete moron. Scott Strong got her elected in his old seat just so he could indirectly maintain control through her. Now, without him, she is like a rudderless ship.
Step 2. Hire a real Superintendent. Moxley is a joke. She got the job because Cadwell, McKee
and Associates knew she was a pliable tool.
Step 3. Deport McLeod to some miserable third world country so that she can never be brought back by Cadwell, McKee and Associates. The construction of county health facilities was an idiotic blunder. When you are engaging in an experiment, you rent, not buy. Many private and public entities that have tried the rent a doc concept have later eliminated it. I do not believe that suitable existing rental property was not available in Lake County.
Over and over and over, the idiocy continues. Pathetic.
Just in case anyone wants to find out anything that is going on with Lake County guvermint they have now created an email adress to expedite those requests. Please contact:
publicrecords@lakecountyfl.gov
Welcome to this flight originating at Leesburg international Airport Lake County, Florida located directly between the jewish owned and controlled Disney empire and the Morse family owned and controlled Villages. Please fasten your seat belts. The movie of the day is “suck up and accept the fact that we control everything except your bowels.” Please understand if you choose to use your bowels without our permission we may also excercise our option to control that body function as well.
Once you have signed into our establishment and agreed to pay for all the free ammenities we have provided to you we will henceforth control all of your reactions concerning questions regarding how great you think we are. You will read the Villages Sun and you will believe every word you read. At no time will you bare false witness to any IRS agent the fact that you know we are screwing every homeowner in the villages with our illegal taxing districts. Damn, just thinking about this makes me want to go join those Rainbow people at Alexander Springs.
Where else on earth do politicians qualify to run for public office and keep it quiet? We always thought politicians needed the public’s support and votes and therefore wanted as much publicity as possible and surely as much free publicity as possible. Well not in Lake County they don’t!
The only exception to the rule so far appears to be the loose cannon Ed Havill. When he found out the courthouse mafia was running their man Carey Baker against him he immediately announced his intentions to run for one more term and plunked down a measly $200 thousand in his war chest for starters!
On April 4, 2011 Michael Graves quietly and without fanfare filed in Tallahassee to seek the 5th Circuit Public Defenders job. Has anyone seen that announcement in the comical or slantinel?
How about that announcement from long time 5th Circuit Public Defender Skip Babb concerning his retirement? Hey man if it wasn’t a secret we could be planning you that well deserved retirement party. The problem is if the secret gets out that you are retiring lots of decent young lawyers might just run for it and bring out the truth about Michael Graves little bar problems and his nose condition. Can’t let that on the street!
We have to stick together and protect all our buddies that have been protecting us all these years right? And besides that Michael has made good money but he can’t seem to keep any of it and we have to give him a job at the public trough for six years so he can get that state retirement to survive his golden years.
Let’s not forget those Bonnie and Clyde imposters Gary Borders and Bob McKee. Borders slipped in the elections office quietly last week and signed up to run for another term as sheriff of Lake County. McKee announced recently he was seeking another term as Godfather of Lake County again, to no fanfare.
Now wouldn’t anyone with just common sense think that would be newsworthy? Heck the old hag from the broke rag recently wrote a story showing a picture of her looking at her lamb cake at age one. What was she trying to prove, that she was once a little girl, who knows? What we do know is anything politicians do in today’s world is newsworthy and the public has a right to know the great lengths of the schemes these government trough eaters go to to protect there jobs and give opportunities to their friends and families not extended to the public at large.
This is a sad ending for the career of Public Defender Skip Babb to find himself wound up in. Mr. Babb has without a doubt been one of the most upstanding members of the 5th judicial circuit court system. What is even sadder is the fact that he hasn’t had much competition for that recognition. Now the very system that he has given much of his life too refuses to allow him to announce he will not be seeking re-election for fear that the courthouse mafia won’t be able to replace him with one of their own. Is this a great county or what?
I recently found out my children are being supported by the GOVERNMENT, and I’m pissed!!!
They qualify for free lunch at school.
They get food stamps.
They have Medicaid.
Can someone help me!!
I pay their mom over $1,100 a month Child Support.
I cover them with insurance at over $300 a month. Heck the co- pay is only $10 and there is no deductible.
I spend as much time with them as their mother, and pay their expenses.
How can this be?
Their mother applied for all this **** and got approved. I guess Newt was right. Obama is the “food stamp president”.
I would love to save you all your tax dollars. Let me have my kids full-time, and take them off the government payroll.
Can anyone offer any suggestions or give me some ideas?
Signed,
Father and Taxpayer.
Lake Schools, Lake Board of County Commissioner’s and the Lake County Sheriff’s office as well as a bunch of other entities that have spun off of them all have one thing in common. If you dig in deep enough you will find Bob McKee has got his fingers in every one of them. Why do you think Carol Macleod was fired by Moxley and then rehired by Moxley? She forgot to double check with the godfather before she fired Macleod and she had to unfire her!
Remember when Anna Cowin was still in office and Susan Getford Moxley was hired by the school board in her interim capacity before Cowin moved out of her offices The godfather bob McKee provided Moxley with office space in the tax collector’s offices. He had space he didn’t need then and that was before we built him and Havill the $9 million new offices.
I have never heard of Chris Patton working at the Lake County Sheriff’s Office but maybe he did. He certainly was the county’s public-information coordinator and again just like when Moxley fired Carol Macleod someone at the BCC got together and fired Chris Patton. At the time Patton started running around and threatening to spill the beans about what he knew about the building schemes and stuff all the disappearing one by one disgruntled employee’s were telling him about. That’s when Bob McKee and some of the good ole boys got together and had Moxley give him the job he’s got now.
So, if the Right Side of the Lake brings enough pressure on the School Board to fire Macleod and Patton where will McKee put them to work at next? I guess Macleod could probably go to woke as a bean counter for Borders. I don’t think that Tom Klinker guy that Lauren Ritchie hired for Borders will last long when he see all the federal monies that have been swapped around and disappeared and who knows what else Lewie Wise was telling everyone they we probably going to accuse her of. But still, what will they do with Chris Patton? They already know when he’s fired he talks. Borders don’t need anymore paid mouthpieces at the LCSO he’s already got enough of them running their mouths for free.
Someone was supposed to be doing an audit on the sheriff’s budget. If they do an honest one they will find a lot worse goings on than they did in the school audit. The trouble is just like the school board mismanaging the taxpayer’s dollars; they won’t do anything about it. Everyone in government is so crooked they can afford to stir the pot. They are afraid some one will start looking at them. Firing is not good enough for these criminals; the cooks need to go to jail and if the elected school board don’t feel this way they need to go to jail too!
Regarding the school board; the bird cage floor cover had an article yesterday about the Mt Dora school expansion project. They said the construction management job had been awarded to Welbro Building Corp of Maitland, Fl. They went on to say CPPI of Oviedo (really of Gainesville, Fl) (remember the Dom Scorpio, VP of CPPI Thanksgiving Day Gators vs Noles fight coming off the elevator video) had tied for second place with some other vendor. They went on to mention if they couldn’t come to a deal with Welbro they would have to break the tie with CPPI and the other one.
Government watchers stay tuned. Welbro is guaranteed to fold and when “they” break that tie CPPI will get that job. Who knows maybe McKee will get Macleod and Patton a job with CPPI
she could be in charge of getting the kickbacks to all the right accounts and Chris Patton could be in charge of lying about Scorpio whipping people up and tell everybody it was really Jimmy Conner at the same time he could tell everyone what a great company CPPI is and that’s why they always get all the Lake County building projects because the save the taxpayers so much money. Is Lake County a great place to live or what? It has been and it will be again just as soon as all the criminals are behind bars where they belong.
I would drive from Tampa and back all day LOL. Can I have one of them jobs Dr. Moxley??
And then I will give you an earful!!!
I am just glad I quit when I did! Wow! What a freakin circus!
Well, I tried to give them the benefit for years but it is time to make changes. One name always comes up when the school system has to explain impropriety, Carol Macleod. I am starting to realize that this woman’s only place in the school system is to hide things and explain why they didn’t know where they were when she gets caught. Take a look at some issues that just smell.
Carol Macleod was hired by the last superintendent, that should set off an alarm immediately. Then when Susan Moxley was hired and cleaned house, Macleod was fired, then strangely rehired. There is another alarm. Macleod lives outside Tampa and commutes everyday. That is also odd, one of the highest positions in the system, making one of the top salaries pays her taxes to another county. Top administrators should live in the county they are employed in. Do some web searches, you will see that she is always at the root of problems.
Chris Patton has been lying since he quit the Sheriffs office, his job is to lie for his employer. He would be let go if he didn’t lie.
It’s time for a change although there won’t be one. If the board can’t see that Susan Moxley is an idiot, they can’t see that Maclod is a thief and just transfers funds at will.