I wanted to repost this a stand-alone post so nobody missed it way at the end of the previous post. I find it fitting that I post this on the two year anniversary of hackers wrecking about $40,000 of City equipment in a massive ransomware attack.
Hopefully, City council will read this thoroughly before acquiescing to Finley’s ridiculous suggestion that we need a combination “IT/Communications” person on the payroll. Trust me – the IT Department is underworked as it is.
The Story of an Underworked IT Department
About three years ago, when I was stewing about the IT Department blowing almost $100,000 on an A/V system for City council, I was contacted by a former City employee – a guy who worked under Monica in the job that Kristy Acevedo currently holds. I’ll call him Mister X. I met him for lunch in Round Rock as I had a hell of a lot of questions for him.
Here is the gist of what he told me:
#1 – Monica is wildly unqualified. The guy who was Monica’s underling BEFORE Mister X apparently quit because he couldn’t stand the fact that his “boss” didn’t know what she was doing. Apparently he left for a nice career in the private sector. This was about the same time I decided to file Open Records Requests for all of Monica’s certifications. She had none of the certs you would expect for an “IT Department Head”. If our IT Department head was more skilled, we likely wouldn’t be hiring TSM and other “consultants” all the time to actually do the work that needs doing.
#2 – Mister X told me that during his time with the City as Monica’s “network admin”, she was forced to take a leave of absence for family reasons for a couple of weeks. I know this is true because I know the circumstances behind it. So basically, Mister X was left on his own for several weeks AND he was still fairly new to the job.
One of the IT Department’s main jobs is “taking tickets” and completing whatever task is on them. For instance, the library may “write a ticket” saying they have a laptop that isn’t working and then either Monica or her underling go over there and try to solve the problem. This is probably 90% of their work. They get tickets from other departments (police, fire, library, City Hall administration, etc) and go solve the problem. In this way, you can see how they spend their time and how many tasks they completed.
Well, as it turns out, while Monica was gone and Mister X was in charge, he was absolutely FLYING through all the tickets. No tickets ever piled up and he was making short work of everything. Mind you, he was doing HIS job AND Monica’s job by himself.
Mister X told me that Monica did NOT like this development at all. She told him point blank to slow down and stop being so fast and efficient (I am paraphrasing here). She told him that she needed the network admin job to look harder and more complex because she wanted to add yet another employee to her “department” (sound familiar??) and that would be hard to do if ONE GUY was currently able to handle all the tickets thrown at him.
Let me repeat that: when Monica took a couple weeks off, the new guy was SO fast and efficient that Monica actually told him to slow it down because (a) it made her look bad and (b) it would hurt her case to Finley that she needed to hire another underling!!!
Now, you may call this hearsay. Maybe Mister X made ALL this up for no reason. Perhaps, but I don’t see why he would. Luckily, I have other evidence of Monica acting in a devious and self-serving way, so it makes me think that Mister X’s story is true as well. If it came down to it, I suppose we could always track down Mister X and get him to admit it again.
Now, why do I think the story is true? (Besides the fact that I have seen the IT Department incompetence for myself?). Because this isn’t the first time Monica pulled a sneaky stunt to serve her own interests. I have actual emails written by Monica during the A/V debacle that show she was trying to HIDE the true cost of the bloated system from City council.
To wit:
Here are some excerpts:
“Monica Wright SPECIFICALLY discouraged Anelundi from giving any hard numbers during his council presentation on March 13, 2017…going so far as to write in her email: “as far as budget numbers go, we won’t mention that to City Council Monday night” then adding that “the City Manager wants Council to know what all is involved with this project….if they know the capabilities of the A/V system, the components and equipment needed to achieve what we want, hopefully their jaw will not drop when we ask for approval.”
“When the time came in July 2018 to actually go and ask for the ludicrous sum Azbell wanted for this vanity project, Monica appeared to have reservations about the cost again, writing in an email to Anelundi: “I am hoping they just award the contract and move on“
These emails were written by Monica herself. I had to hire a lawyer and make a lot of noise to get them. I’m sure Monica never thought those emails would see the light of day and I’m sure that now that I’m on the scene, they are all a LOT more careful with what they type onto City email servers. But as you can see, the damage is done.
City council: just say NO to Finley’s request for another IT worker. If you REALLY want to improve the department, fire Monica Wright, make Acevedo the IT specialist (no department title) and pay her a little bit more. If something is beyond her abilities, pay TSM to do it.
In other words, the exact same situation we have now but without the $103,000 cost of having Monica Wright sit at her desk all day typing emails and changing printer cartridges.