{"id":52930,"date":"2024-12-28T23:52:20","date_gmt":"2024-12-29T04:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=52930"},"modified":"2024-12-28T23:57:24","modified_gmt":"2024-12-29T04:57:24","slug":"letter-to-the-editor-the-great-lakeland-electric-rebate-ripoff-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/12\/28\/letter-to-the-editor-the-great-lakeland-electric-rebate-ripoff-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter to the Editor: The Great Lakeland Electric Rebate Ripoff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">by Kevin Kayden<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Great Lakeland Electric Rebate Ripoff: Commissioners are complicit (as is The Ledger by their silence) by the Lakeland Electric AGM&#8217;s boasting &#8220;upwards of $200,000&#8221; in rebates denied. Apparently, the mediocre city attorney thinks &#8220;rebate rules are subject to change without notice&#8221; is a license to swindle. Surprise! It&#8217;s not. A straightforward scam, too &#8220;complex&#8221; for The Ledger reporter to figure out!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed aligncenter is-type-wp-embed is-provider-tampa-free-press wp-block-embed-tampa-free-press\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"oqR7vDy7ur\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tampafp.com\/opinion-the-great-lakeland-electric-rebate-ripoff\/\">Opinion: The Great Lakeland Electric Rebate Ripoff<\/a><\/blockquote><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; visibility: hidden;\" title=\"&#8220;Opinion: The Great Lakeland Electric Rebate Ripoff&#8221; &#8212; Tampa Free Press\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tampafp.com\/opinion-the-great-lakeland-electric-rebate-ripoff\/embed\/#?secret=0vHs2wYOlS#?secret=oqR7vDy7ur\" data-secret=\"oqR7vDy7ur\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m suing them as we speak: 2024SC010340000000&nbsp;<strong>NOT ONE WORD from The Ledger.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I do the presentation, and expose the question by Commissioner McCloud to that AGM, &#8220;How can you have a deficit if you&#8217;re not paying the rebates,&#8221; some rambling non-answer from the AGM, while Mayor Mutz plays with his tablet, they don&#8217;t even know if their program is operating at a surplus or a loss! Once again, it&#8217;s too &#8220;complex&#8221; for The Ledger reporter to figure out. They watch 50 victims whose emails I have uncovered, to refute the lying AGM&#8217;s claim to the oblivious commissioners that &#8220;there were a handful of negative experiences.&#8221; If you can believe it, 1300 emails to Andrea Scott in October of 2023, when people realized that they&#8217;d been scammed.\u00a0<strong>NOT ONE WORD from The Ledger.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The RICE Fiasco: These same inept commissioners, have taken 200MW of base generation off-line and replaced it with an alleged 125MW of RICE Peak Generators (6), but in reality only 25MW (1500 hours\/year is 1\/6 of the total hours in a year). The $129M budget initially promised by Lakeland Electric GM Mike Beckham turned out to be a fantasy, about $50M over budget! But that&#8217;s not all. I&#8217;ve discovered, through public records requests, that these white elephants can only run HALF the time GM Beckham promised, 1500 hours\/year as opposed to GM Beckham&#8217;s bogus 3000 hours\/year. According to my calculations, this fiasco cost the people $115M.\u00a0<strong>NOT ONE WORD from The Ledger.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Lake Bonny Scandalous Neglected Flood of 2024. City Manager Sherrouse has ignored pleas from residents for two months that his pump isn&#8217;t pumping. Then, after all these people&#8217;s houses end up being flooded, all resources are put into cleaning up Lake Mirror, as Mayor Mutz boasted, &#8220;there were important people coming to Lakeland.&#8221; Sure, for a big car show! One lady, the insurance won&#8217;t pay for her destroyed foundation because it was underwater too long! It would still be underwater but for the fact that somebody had a connection with Jennifer Canady, and she managed to get pumps brought in that actually pumped. Then Commissioner Madden comes up with the absurd criticism of CSX because they won&#8217;t allow her to run the drain lines ACROSS the railroad tracks! From The Ledger, complete silence about the fact that the incompetence of these commissioners is only eclipsed by their callousness.\u00a0<strong>NOT ONE WORD from The Ledger.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More? OK, the email &#8220;Corruption in Lakeland,&#8221; sent by an ex-Lakeland Electric employee, is obviously &#8220;disgruntled&#8221; as he&#8217;s making twice the salary, living on a South Seas island, with HOUSING PROVIDED! Allegations and alleged proof that Lakeland Electric and thus Lakeland have discriminated against hiring veterans.\u00a0<strong>NOT ONE WORD from The Ledger.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But, if you do subscribe to The Ledger, you&#8217;ll know the date and time of any Taylor Swift concert! So there is that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Kevin Kayden The Great Lakeland Electric Rebate Ripoff: Commissioners are complicit (as is The Ledger by their silence) by the Lakeland Electric AGM&#8217;s boasting &#8220;upwards of $200,000&#8221; in rebates&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNFwvMTJcL2xha2VsYW5kLWVsZWN0cmljLWJ1aWxkaW5nLndlYnA_Zml0PTEwMjQlMkM2ODImc3NsPTEiLCJ0eHQiOiJMZXR0ZXIgdG8gdGhlIEVkaXRvcjogVGhlIEdyZWF0IExha2VsYW5kIEVsZWN0cmljIFJlYmF0ZSBSaXBvZmYiLCJ0ZW1wbGF0ZSI6ImhpZ2h3YXkiLCJibG9nX2lkIjoxNjMwNDA2NjF9.GcX5uugin2rxNobgbzzCPIi8PavTh9Xc5f_fpgvEYhEMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":52931,"url":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/lakeland-electric-building.webp","type":"image\/webp"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[9373],"class_list":["post-52930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters","tag-letter-to-the-editor-the-great-lakeland-electric-rebate-ripoff"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52930"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52934,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52930\/revisions\/52934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}