At Lake Wales meetings, a commissioner 'lectures' about climate change and the UN
It is the traditional concluding segment of city meetings, a period known as commissioners’ comments, when elected officials customarily congratulate citizens, recognize staff members or praise school sports teams.
At Lake Wales City Commission meetings, though, one commissioner in recent months has repeatedly devoted his allotted time to more global topics: climate change and the United Nations.
At least seven times since July, Commissioner Daniel Krueger has spoken, sometimes at considerable length, about climate change, which he has dismissed as a “hoax” and “junk science,” and the United Nation’s Agenda 21 platform, a call for sustainable development. He has played a video on climate change and distributed materials to other commissioners.
The statements do not correspond to the meeting agendas, though Krueger has sometimes suggested a connection between the topics and the commission's planning strategies.
Lake Wales resident Charlene Bennett objects to Krueger’s use of the public meetings to share his opinions about climate change. Bennett has twice spoken during the citizen comment period at the start of meetings to admonish Krueger for the practice.
“I certainly have talked to many people who feel that Commissioner Krueger is — I’m trying to think of the right way to describe it — they feel he's quite inappropriate, and maybe some terms that I'm not going to use with you,” Bennett said. “But there are plenty of people who feel the same way that I do about him.”
Krueger did not respond to a voicemail left last week.
Krueger, 76 and a former Wisconsin dairy farmer, spoke dismissively of climate change during his campaign last year while also raising national political issues, the Lake Wales News reported at the time.
Inveighing against U.N.
At a commission workshop meeting on July 26, Krueger addressed the UN’s Agenda 21 and subsequent 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, topics he has raised multiple times in meetings since then.
Agenda 21, a non-binding action plan promoting sustainable development, emerged from the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The document encouraged local governments to seek sustainable development by 2000. The United States is a signatory country to Agenda 21 but did not vote to ratify the plan, which has no legal authority for the country.
In the workshop’s agenda packet, Krueger included copies of two articles critical of the UN policies. While the authorship of one was not clear, the other listed as authors Aaron and Melissa Dykes of Truthstream Media, a conservative website that has drawn criticism for promoting conspiracy theories.
At the July 26 meeting, the City Commission discussed the draft of Lake Wales Envisioned, a guideline for longterm growth that the city paid the consulting firm Dover, Kohl & Partners about $580,000 to produce.
In eight minutes of comments, Krueger linked the draft to the UN’s 2030 Agenda and questioned the motivation behind some of its recommendations. He noted that Dover, Kohl has received awards from the American Planning Association, a connection that he said “gives me concern.”
Krueger tied the Lake Wales Envisioned plan to terminology used in United Nations report and suggested that Dover, Kohl had “an agenda” for restricting the city’s freedom to decide on what manner of developments to allow.
After Krueger completed his comments, Deputy Mayor Robin Gibson said, “I would say to Mr. Krueger, my guiding star is Edward W. Bok and Frederick Law Olmsted. And I very much like our system of government, where the control is up here, and the control is not in that building in New York City.”
Mayor Jack Hilligoss added, “I would agree wholeheartedly with that.”
Gibson referred to the founder of Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales and Frederic Law Olmsted Jr., who produced a city design in 1931 that provides the basis for current planning efforts.
When the City Commission met on Aug. 15, Krueger included in the official agenda and distributed copies of an article from American Thinker, a conservative publication, critical of climate science. The article’s author was Brian C. Joondeph, an ophthalmologist in Colorado, according to his LinkedIn profile. Two of the five pages Krueger shared consisted of reader comments.
The agenda for the Aug. 31 commission workshop included Krueger’s insertion of an article from The Epoch Times, a worldwide publication affiliated with the Falun Gong religious movement. The article quoted a statement from the Global Climate Intelligence Group declaring, “There is no climate emergency.”
“So please take some time and read this,” Krueger said during his comment period. “I want to get it on the record because it's kind of important. We’ve got to know what's going on for real in order to make decent decisions as we go forward. So we can't be making decisions based on speculation, propaganda, whatever.”
Critics said that few of the 1,600 signers of the statement were actual climate scientists.
A 2013 study found that 97% of peer-reviewed research found that rapid climate change is happening and that human activity is largely responsible. Another study from 2021 rated confirmation from more than 88,000 peer-reviewed studies at 99.9%.
Playing video from PragerU
At the Sept. 5 commission meeting, Krueger said that he had planned to read an article that would take 10½ minutes but decided instead to play a video from PragerU. Founded in 2009 by conservative radio talk show host Dennis Prager, PragerU is not an academic institution.
Before showing the video, Krueger raised concerns about the promotion of Traditional Neighborhood Design, or TND, in the Lake Wales Envisioned plan. He said the concept derives from the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda and is intended to assert control of local governments rather than actually promote sustainable development.
In the five-minute video, Michael Shellenberger criticized the use of wind turbines and solar farms to address concerns about producing energy from fossil fuels. The video concluded with a pitch for donations to PragerU.
Shellenberger, an author and former candidate for governor in California, has drawn criticism from some environmental scientists and academics for presenting what they call inaccurate information.
Krueger again criticized the United Nations’ Agenda 21 plan in briefer comments at the Oct. 3 commission meeting.
On Oct. 12, the City Commission held a workshop to discuss a proposed resolution accepting the Lake Wales Envisioned plan and approving its concepts and ideas. Victor Dover, founding principal of the Coral Gables firm hired to produce the blueprint, attended the workshop.
During the commission discussion, Krueger raised concerns about the development of the plan, saying that it seemed designed to mitigate global climate change.
“I know that that's kind of a controversial topic, but to me, everything I’ve read indicates it is a hoax,” he said.
Krueger emphasized a connection between Dover Kohl and the American Planning Association. Noting that the association gives awards in such categories as environmental justice, sustainable growth and social equity, Krueger said, “These are all Marxist terms.”
Though he said the plan had “wonderful” elements, Krueger compared illustrations of desirable neighborhoods in the draft to propaganda. Victor Dover declined to comment on Krueger’s statements.
Lake Wales' controversial pipe plant Company will begin construction early next year
Despite his reservations, Krueger voted with the other commissioners at the Oct. 17 meeting to accept the Lake Wales Envisioned plan. He resumed his criticism of the UN’s sustainability plans in his comments at the end of that meeting.
Krueger continued his arguments against consensus climate science at the next two meetings. At the Nov. 1 workshop, he distributed material that was not included in the official agenda. He mocked James Hansen, an adjunct professor at Columbia University who first raised concerns about global warming as a NASA scientist in the 1980s, and again lambasted the U.N.
He said that the U.N.’s International Panel on Climate Change “wants to force us into making decisions that supposedly will improve the environment but really have nothing to do with it. The only thing those decisions have to do with is controlling people.”
At the commission’s regular meeting on Nov. 7, Krueger read from an opinion piece in the Guardian, a British newspaper. He again called climate change a hoax and warned that the city should not make planning decisions based on concerns about the issue.
Residents object to 'lectures'
Bennett, who regularly attends Lake Wales City Commission meetings, felt compelled to answer Krueger during public comments at the Oct. 3 session. She described The Epoch Times and PragerU, two of Krueger’s sources, as “purveyors of conspiracy theories that are outrageous and are unsupported by science.”
Bennett added: “But we have an elected city commissioner who regularly reads material that he gets from these publications. It gives the impression that he speaks for the whole commission. And people don't know better than to believe him because he's an elected official. This should not be allowed to happen unchallenged.”
Juanita Zwaryczuk, another regular at the meetings, criticized Krueger for his continued comments disparaging climate scientists.
“First of all, it's not pertinent to anything that's happening at the meeting, what he's talking about,” Zwaryczuk said. “So really, in my opinion, it's just a lecture. He's lecturing on a topic that he obviously has a problem with. Frankly, he resents when somebody like me, or taxpayers, come and want to talk about something that isn't actually going on at the meeting.”
Hilligoss, Lake Wales’ mayor since 2022, said that commissioners are free to say whatever they like during their comment periods — “just like citizens can comment on whatever they want comment on.” He said he had not discussed Krueger’s comments with his fellow commissioner.
“I’m not sure I share his logic, but he’s free to say it,” Hilligoss said.
Gibson, Lake Wales’ longest-serving commissioner, declined to comment about Krueger.
Krueger won a special election last year after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended Kris Fitzgerald, who had been arrested by the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. He briefly left the commission this year when DeSantis reinstated Fitzgerald following her acquittal at trial.
But Lake Wales’ city attorney determined that Fitzgerald was ineligible to rejoin the commission because she had moved from her district while under suspension. Krueger's term runs through May.
Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Lake Wales commissioner strays far from agenda in meeting comments
