I have perused 335 pages of information provided by the City of Lampasas as per my records request. What follows for this post and the next few are my summary…slogging through the junk (100 pages of receipts for printer ink cartridges) and bringing truth to the taxpayer:
Question #1 was not answered. The question was this:
How many times has the City of Lampasas contracted Azbell Electronics to do work for the city in the last 3 years? What were the total sums paid to Azbell Electronics for these other jobs and what was the description of the work to be done (include copy of bid sheets)? Were any other bids solicited for those jobs?
I thought that perhaps this was an oversight (ho ho ho). Surely $483 would get me the answer to question #1! So I emailed City attorney Jo-Christy Brown, as well as Finley deGraffenreid (city manager) and Gary Cox (assistant city manager) telling them I saw zero mention of Azbell Electronics in the entire 335 page pile of paper. I asked JC Brown point blank “just to be clear, the City of Lampasas is refusing to answer question #1 about any other Azbell contracts, correct?”
Jo-Christy’s reply was a typical lawyer answer telling me that they are, in fact, not answering that question.
To wit: “Repsonses made to ORR’s are to provide publucalky [sic] available documents only, not to generate replies to inquiries, as per the correspondence provided to you explained. “
OK. The city lawyer refuses to answer. Next up was Finley and Gary. I asked them the same question.
Finley and Gary both answered in a polite and timely fashion…and gave me the info nobody else would: NO, we have never used Azbell Electronics before.
Of course, it also begs the question of why a never-before-used contractor is trusted with a $100,000.00 project when they are the only bid and the bid sheet’s very first item is clearly wildly overpriced. Or why we need SIX 70-inch LCD TVs for city council…but I would like to thank the city manager and assistant city manager for a timely and informative response.