To The Editor:

About a week’s time in July of 2009 (on the website of the Lehigh Acres Citizen) there appeared an article authored by the Lehigh Acres Fire Department’s public information officer called, “LAFD responds to Keith “Conspiracy, Conspiracy, Evil everywhere” Kaye.

It seems there are folks in town that want to shut me up and apparently that article was intended to discredit me and do just that; shut me up. And it did, until now.

Basically the article’s intent was to vilify me after it stated I had allegedly written: that the Insurance Service Office (ISO) was the LAFD’s underwriter; that there were “two sets of books” for the LAFD and that the “leftist media” made heroes out of the firemen.

At the time, and in response to that article, I offered to publicly debate any elected policy-maker on all the things I had written. There were no takers but the offer still stands.

As the thought of that article has been bothering me, please consider this explanation as to why I wrote what I did:

I did state the ISO was the final authority for the LAFD and that the ISO set the lower limits on what equipment, manpower, etc are required of the LAFD. I was wrong. The LAFD does not consult the ISO and “hasn’t for years.”

In 2006 I had conversation with a local insurance broker “with over 25 years’ experience” and he informed me of the ISO and its purported authority. Unquestioned, I took him at his word. In 2009 I wrote what he told me.

What was my “error” concerning the ISO statement? I did not double-check the broker’s story and worse yet, rather than quote him as my source of information I took “ownership” of his statement to me. Not smart.

Nationally, the ISO is an organization that offers information and direction to subscribing agencies but LAFD chooses not to listen to the professionals. Silly me; imagine that I figured the LAFD would listen to experts.

It is true the LAFD has “two sets of books.”

As intended, the public-at-large doesn’t know about the “other set of books” and are purposely kept in the dark. The truth is the state pays money-changers to manage the books and this holds true for nearly every government-agency in the nation. Isn’t corporate-governance great?

I made no mention of a “leftist media” but I have written that the media glorifies public servants (most specifically the pitifully under-performing teachers) and distorts the truth regarding empire-building bureaucrats.

There are a lot of plans concerning Lehigh Acres that do not benefit taxpayers. You are being media-fed a bunch of crap by professional crapsters. The wannabes are ever-present and posturing.

The guy in Washington talks of “transparency.” Do you believe it?

Do things appear to be transparent or obviously clear to you? “No,” you say? Jeez, this must be just a coincidence because to think otherwise may indicate conspiracy is afoot. Naw, it couldn’t be; it has to be one big coincidence, eh?

Keith Kaye

Lehigh Acres