Our $140,000 per year (plus benefits) city manager has come up with some unique ideas NEVER before dreamed up by overpaid government bureaucrats: spend more money and raise more money!!
From the 8/16/21 Dispatch:
The Lampasas City Council has expressed interest in funding several renovation projects in the proposed Fiscal-Year 2022 budget to include the Hostess House, pavilion and skate park.
In August of last year, the estimate to fund approximately five projects totaled around $940,000.
Last Monday during a workshop session, City Manager Finley deGraffenried indicated the updated estimate increased to $1.9 million.
Hey, what’s a million bucks among friends, right? It was only a year ago they said it would be $940,000. You can’t expect a guy with years and years of experience and a $140,000 paycheck (plus benefits) to be able to predict the cost of stuff to within 150%. C’mon man!!
A HUGE chunk of that is the idiotic Hostess House “facelift” – which I said LONG AGO was going to be another boondoggle. They told us it just needed “a few minor repairs”. I laughed at that.
That was WAY back in October of 2019.
NOW, they are talking about spending $1.4 MILLION for those “minor decorations”. City Council buffoon Cathy Kuehne even said they should do it right, “even if it costs a little more”. Spoken like a woman who has spent her life collecting government paychecks!
Finley also suggested the City hire three new bodies – police, fire and a ridiculous “communications/IT” person. You know, because of all the new houses being built by developers being subsidized by hundreds of thousands of tax dollars from Misti Talbert and TJ Monroe.
Finally, they need to pay for all of this. Finley suggests……wait for it….raising electric and water rates. That is always the “go to” way to pay for shit. I mean, bumping up the rate by .002 per kilowatt-hour doesn’t sound like much, but it will add about $200,000 to the City coffers. He also suggests raising the water rate by $.05 per 1000 gallons. That would add about $160,000 to City coffers.
To summarize: hey, we were off by a million on our needless projects, we want to add three new bodies (PLUS benefits!!) AND we think we should soak the citizens for another $360,000 through higher utility rates.
Truly a great plan! Like a Swiss watch, if I understand it correctly.