To the Editor:
I hope the “professional journalists” at the Daily Sun are OK, it has been over a week now since we have read an attack article.
Maybe it’s COVID-19. Or maybe they’re just running out of ideas and ways, without constantly repeating themselves, on how to attack those that they don’t like or more importantly those that threaten the boss.
Well I have some new ideas for the professional, never biased, never one-sided, fair and balanced journalists at the Daily Sun to consider.
1. Could you please give us the annual salaries, other income, and total net worth of Commissioners Gilpin and Breeden and Representative Hage, same as you have done for the new commissioners.
2. Could you please go back in time and revisit the justification for the over 25 percent tax increase and how it was we were Bamboozled so quickly. Please tell us how it was that the previous commissioners ignored their constituents, ignored the questions and the protest and still voted unanimously for this tax increase.
3. Could you please give us some precedent from Florida or anywhere else in the country for that matter, where elected officials ignored questions and opposition, and then voted unanimously to raise taxes more than 25 percent to benefit a private developer and mostly new homeowners in another part of the city with less than 5 percent of the benefit going to the people whose taxes were raised.
4. Could you please give us the total dollar amount raised and continues to be raised from these tax increases that affect all of us, north and south of State Road 44? Where is the money going?.
5. Could you please tell us who asked (or instructed) the governor to suspend our new commissioners? Or did the governor take it upon himself to suspend these men after their arrest? If that is the case, again could you give us some precedence as to how many other county commissioners in Florida have been suspended after they were arrested, not tried and convicted, but arrested on suspicion they may have committed a crime. I’m sure a professional news organization like yours could find this information rather quickly. If the number is not 100 percent, then what is the criteria? Is it concern for the citizenry, or mostly political payback?
As they say, there are no guarantees in life, but I can almost guarantee that you will never see any of these things reported in the Daily Sun. Why, because these are not fair, balanced, or unbiased and certainly not professional journalists., They are paid employees, reporting only one side. They are paid to promote The Villages in a very positive light and to support anyone (i.e. Gilpin, Breeden, Hage, Baxley, DeSantis) or anything that advances the goals and profits of the boss. And conversely they will seek to discredit, demean, and destroy anything or anyone that stands in the way. Shameful.
Luke Courtemanche
Haciendas of Mission Hills
