Oh goodness. It seems every internal City Hall Monica email I open is an embarrassment of grammar…not to mention more evidence of chicanery and outright lies when awarding a no-bid $95,000 contract to Azbell Electronics.
Dumping on her writing skills feels a little bit like pistol-whipping a blind kid, but after her decision to agitate me in a bar recently, I really have no choice but to keep this up.
As we can see below, yet again, she was in contact with poor Adam Comer from Broadcast Works (original bid $34,000 for the City Council chambers TVs and microphones). Adam eventually was quietly and inexplicably dropped and not allowed to bid a second time (despite being BY FAR the lowest bid the first time around)….ostensibly because Finley suddenly remembered Azbell was a “buy board” company.
The following was sent by Monica to Adam on December 19, 2016:
Adam, I haven’t talked to you in a while and wanted to touch base with you. So, it looks like we are getting geared up for the Chambers project again…finally. We should have a set of plans by January. I spoke with our City Manager today and he asked me about the project and asked that I touch base with you. I think that we will need to re-bid this project due to the number of things that has changed as well as some of our needs that have changed. Also, I would be willing to bet that the equipment that you quoted for us 2 years ago, is out of date. Please let me know if you are still interested in this project and how you would like to proceed. I do believe that there is a number of things that we can cut out of the original scope, therefore I think pricing will change. Respectfully Monica Wright IT Director City of Lampasas.
What can we glean from this absolute abortion of incorrect tenses, run-on sentences and unneeded commas? Three facts are impossible to dispute:
Number one: Monica doesn’t know the difference between HAS and HAVE. Nor does she know when to use IS versus ARE. These are things that every native-born American learns in second grade. Here is a proper usage:
“I HAVE fairly conclusive evidence that Monica Wright HAS no freaking idea what she is doing when it comes to writing emails OR fixing computers.”
Number two: City Manager Finley deGraffenried specifically asked her to touch base with Broadcast Works – which (once again) wrecks his argument that they didn’t need to re-bid this nearly $100,000 debacle due to some kind of “buy board” designation. She even used the word “re-bid” in her email.
Number three: Monica (shockingly) actually realizes pricing may have changed since the previous bid. Hopefully she is smart enough to also realize that pricing is almost always CHEAPER over time when it comes to tech stuff like TV sets, computers and cameras. Knowing this, it is bewildering to me that she didn’t blink an eye when Azbell Electronics charged the City $2,150 EACH for four 70-inch TV sets that were available at Wal-Mart for under $1000 last summer (yesterday I saw some 65” sets there for $600).
Not only does the price of tech go DOWN over time, but she also specifically mentions things we can cut out of the original scope! Which should have ALSO made this project cheaper. Between those two facts, Monica and City Hall should have been angling for a price FAR LESS than the original $34,000 bid they accepted from Broadcast Works two years earlier….yet somehow they ended up paying for a $95,000 NO-BID project from Azbell Electronics. It truly boggles the mind.
Coming soon: more grammatical diarrhea from Monica Can’t-Wright and her underling Kristy “The Joker” Acevedo.
