Being the local gadfly (look it up, Monica…) is hard and thankless work. (OK, not COMPLETELY thankless…those 27 of you who thank me in private really help keep me going). While the rest of you were busy eating Spring Ho turkey legs and posting drunken Facebook videos, I was combing through stats and budgets from other Texas towns our size so I can get an idea of how our government wastes so much money (*COUGH* Information Systems Department *COUGH**COUGH business park *COUGH*)
I get my candidate towns from a list found HERE. I stumbled upon Crockett Texas – a similar-sized town about three hours from here. As I was eyeing their budget (and noticing they had NO Tech Department at all, let alone TWO tech bozo clowns on payroll), I saw a line item for “civic center” and had to do a double take. The first tiny town I picked randomly actually was stupid enough to do the civic center thing??
Yep. Must be a town infested with Bruce Haywood clones. I shudder at the thought.
Amusingly, the annual operating budget for 2018 was $101,000 – which made me feel extremely smart, since I recently guestimated the operating cost of a Lampasas Civic Center “could easily run into six figures”. Care to guess what the revenues were? Bruce? Any other boobs? Do you even know what “revenues” are?
Revenues for 2018 were $15,000. For those of you mathematically challenged, that is an $86,000 loss every year. I can think of better ways to spend $86,000 per year. Roads, sewer and water come to mind.
Bruce, have you ever thought to yourself “I need to get to Crockett and support that local community!”…no, you haven’t. Just like nobody is going to rush to Lampasas just because they build a civic center.
A quick look at the calendar for this civic center shows page after page after page of….nothing.
According to the website, the center was built in 1987…so I’m guessing it DIDN’T cost the $5 million or so we would have to waste on a similar facility. I’m also guessing Crockett doesn’t have anything else going on there – unlike this town, which has an absurd number of parks, trails and fields to keep you occupied. Not to mention Hidden River right down the street, if a large space is needed.
So, Bruce and other Civic Center Boobs: do you STILL want to waste millions on a civic center that will very likely run a huge deficit every year and sit unused 97% of the time? I know it kills Bruce and other boobs to see piles of money sitting in city coffers unspent. But I have a solution for that too:
GIVE IT BACK TO THE TAXPAYERS. Feel free to LOWER the tax rates and decrease our effective rate. Pretty sure there is no law against that.