As you may know, the Pro-Big-Government organization known as the Texas Municipal League (TML) holds their annual convention every October. As always, the City sent our head of the LEDC (Lampasas Economic Development Corp) to attend – where she presumably attended such important presentations as “Race and Equity – How Your City Can Implement Targeted Strategies to Improve Outcomes“.
I’m not sure why we still waste money on this, since we will soon have a new $100,000-per-year “Development Services Director” who will be in charge of spinning THEIR wheels on “development“…but whatever.
The REAL shocker is how the City managed to spend $4,149.67 (page 19 – last 8 entries) at a conference that lasted two nights and posted hotel room rates at $210!
I’ll set aside for the moment that the conference is a total joke and a waste of time. It’s something they squander money on year after year with zero results. Let’s just try to figure out how they managed to spend $4,149.67!
The conference was in San Antonio…so according to their posted agenda, our LEDC Director could have easily driven down there on Wednesday morning and driven back on Friday at noon, when the conference ended. By my count, that is TWO nights (Wednesday and Thursday).
Seeing as how the TML posted a list of hotels and their prices online…and ALL of those hotels were priced between $169 and $229 per night…it seems fairly impossible to waste $4,149.67. That works out to almost $2,100 PER NIGHT.
I’ll be charitable and call it $300 per night with taxes and valet parking. That puts us at $600 total for the conference. Still a long way from $4,150, however.
But there is more! I also know there are a bunch of hangers on who go down there too, and make it a “girls trip” on the taxpayer’s dime. I realize we NEED to field a FULL BAND to sing karaoke (page 2) and win $2,500 from Waste Connections** (see below).
Even adding in 3 more hangers on, that gets us to $1,200. I am assuming two ladies can share a room, which would be fiscally prudent seeing as how it isn’t their money. So FOUR people sharing TWO rooms still only gets us to $1,200 total. I’ll even assume they just stayed there an extra night to party it up on the taxpayer dime. That STILL gets us to only $1,800! Not even halfway there.
So I have to wonder: what the hell did they spend those thousands of dollars on? How many people need to go down there and get a hotel room for two nights and feast on the taxpayer dime? We’ll soon find out, as I have requested all receipts for this trip.
There is really no reason for more than one or two people to go to this nonsense and bring back all the “great ideas” that will turn Lampasas into the next Great City, right? Ideas like, maybe, spending a million dollars on a corpse repository ‘Business Park’ weed patch or maybe $1.5 million renovating a building to house a fancy City Council Chambers with a $95,000 no-bid audio system. Or even a $185,000 no-bid bathroom in a deserted park.
Big Ideas like that! Perhaps those great ideas all come from the TML Conference every year.
** Waste Connections sponsors the karaoke contest. They paid our group $5,000 last year for finishing first and $2,500 this year for placing second. Awesome, right? Of course, the City of Lampasas pays Waste Connections roughly $3,000 PER DAY (that’s well over a million dollars per year, Monica!) to collect garbage in our City…and I’m pretty sure their contract is up for renewal next spring. Sooooo….let’s just keep all of that in perspective. M’kay?