“A weem a way a weem a way, a weem away a weem a way
In the Fishbowl, the pricey Fishbowl, the Goldfish swim tonight”
Topics of discussion (my predictions):
- We’re spending another $2 million on the idiotic
corpse-repository‘business park’. Screw you. - We’re closing the pools this summer. Screw you.
- We’re giving Finley $140,000 a year. Screw you.
Also guys, I’m still waiting on that list of businesses you handed out $100,000 in tax dollars to! Tell JC Brown to stop racking up the billable hours and cough it up already. There’s no way around it.
MEETING NOTES
5:30pm: Six of us masochists waiting on the Internet to watch…..
Finley now talking about the corpse repository ‘business park”. He is informing council that the BP is not as shovel-ready as we were led to believe. Mandy now about to run through the nearly TWO MILLION MORE DOLLARS they want to piss down this rat hole. The bank will likely only lend around $900k. Leaving approximately one million short.
According to Mandy, there is plenty of demand for the business park [LOL!!], but it’s not ready for them to move in…even though they said it was “shovel ready” almost FIVE YEARS AGO. Three years ago, then-candidate Delana Toups said “businesses were on the verge of moving into the corpse repository business park“….which was clearly a complete lie.
5:40pm: Now the LEDC is begging council for $500,000 to “develop” the property further. You know – the shovel-ready property. Who are these prospects???? They have NEVER named a single prospect by name.
Mike White admitting the thing is a “goat patch” and his preference is to sell the entire thing. I love it. EXACTLY RIGHT.
Somebody else now claiming there is a “prospect” willing to pull the trigger on moving in….a supposed “proven business”. OK – WHO IS IT???? Morons! Really guys – if you expect to be taken seriously, then name the damn prospect already.
Randy “Speed Bump” Clark now jumping in….I have no idea what his point was.
I almost feel sorry for these saps. They have painted themselves into a corner with this silly-assed ‘business park’ and there is really no way out without spending FURTHER millions on a shaky idea or dumping it and looking stupid.
Finley now using $140,000 terms like “development matrix”.
Now they are discussing mooching off taxpayers by applying for grants (‘free money from other people’) at the state or federal level…or maybe USDA. City saying their best guess is 8 to 10 months to get the shovel-ready park actually ready. Which likely means 18 months, if you convert to Finley time.
Mike White falling victim to the “sunk cost fallacy” – saying they have too much invested to walk away. Admits it is a shitty project on ROI terms.
TJ Monroe totally and enthusiastically in favor of flushing more money down the toilet – huge shocker. This pea-brain sits on City council AND the LEDC. A double whammy of stupidity.
Speed Bump back in there talking about chasing a chicken. Gotta love the old guy!
These bozos are all talking themselves into flushing more money down the toilet. Of course, there is then the question of where all those millions come from. Council is now on record as “we need to shoe this horse or sell it…let’s shoe it and move on”. Wrong call. The next TWO MILLION DOLLARS will not put any lipstick on this pig.
Taking a break now before workshop session. Sixteen people in the Internet peanut gallery now.
Back in session…..Chamber of Commerce representative speaking. Quite frankly, I have no idea why the City pays money to the Chamber of Commerce. Makes zero sense to me. I’ll just let this chick prattle on for a bit.
Police chief now talking about the commercial vehicles being parked on residential streets. This issue bores me a bit – all about permitting. Still waiting for pool discussion.
This is brutal. Parking permitting STILL being discussed 20 minutes later. Crazy how council makes us listen to hours of boring minutiae but when it comes to a three minute discussion of Finley getting a $10,000 raise, they can’t bother us with that and it gets hidden away.
Mike White for banning huge trucks altogether. HERE HERE! Agreed. Let’s get on with it!
6:36pm: FINALLY….moving on to a stop sign Delana Toups wants put somewhere or something. At least she hasn’t brought up the Tree Police idea lately.
6:40pm: Pools about to be discussed. Some chick (Kim?) is at the mic who apparently runs the pools. Didn’t catch her name. They need 32 employees to run the pools and 23 are lifeguards. She only has EIGHT trained guards. She needs to train 12 new lifeguards….now she’s explaining that nobody applied. [see my discussion about WAGES TOO LOW!!!]
[No mention, of course, that if City council hadn’t dicked around two weeks ago and tabled this discussion until today, that she could have been halfway there already. So, there’s that. Good job, Goldfish!]
She is telling us it takes a month to train everyone….school starts August 10th…we’d only have a 5-week pool season…uuuhhh oooh…here comes the bad news….BAM – proposes to close Hanna for the season.
Now she’s claiming closing Hanna is good so they can “do repairs”. Christ lady – what have you been doing the last SIX MONTHS?!?!? Total nonsense.
She proposes Hancock pool open with a ton of ridiculous Covid bullshit attached: Capacity greatly reduced…something about cleaning the bathrooms constantly (we all piss in the pool…forget that one)…nobody without a parent…more blah blah blah about social distancing.
One Goldfish (Toups?) is upset that the pool is only for local residents. What if cousins come in from out of town? [Lol. Too bad!]. Kim shoots that shit down: “this isn’t a normal summer”. HA! Starting to like this Kim chick a bit. Amen – you’re already reducing total City pool capacity by like 75% – outsiders can pound sand, ding dong.
This whole “capacity reduction” is retarded in the extreme. If you’re gonna open, then OPEN. Such nonsense. If Ricky Roy was the mayor, he’d tell the Gov to suck an egg.
Finley “$140,000 salary” deGraffenreid is now discussing the 2020/2021 budget. He’s concerned about sales tax receipts going down into the new year (obviously). He’s sounding like every politician ever: we’ll keep taxes low and give you all you want! I don’t see a point in detailing all this as it’s likely smoke, mirrors and crazy assumptions. I’ll start believing the numbers they come up with in late July. That’s when the REAL numbers come out and we find the IT Department gets a 15% increase or something.
Very last thing he throws out: employee compensation. LOL. Can’t forget that one. Lemme guess: raises for everyone!
Ricky Roy on deck! All City buildings open to the public June 1st. They will practice social distancing and sneeze guards are being installed all over the damn place. RICKY, NOOOOO!!!! This isn’t you, Ricky. YOU KNOW this social distancing is all horseshit.