I used to call Mayor Talbert a “drunken sailor” for her propensity to blow money like an inebriated seaman on shore leave. She was instrumental in wasting $1.5 million renovating Old City Hall as well as handing out hundreds of thousands in “free money” to developers like Deorald Finney and S2M2. Terrible decisions that the City is still suffering from today.
But TJ Monroe is putting her to shame with some of the latest ridiculous money wasting going on now.
Here is a taste:
HOSTESS HOUSE:
In October 2019, when the City decided to take over the Hostess House, we were told it needed a few “minor repairs” and “minor decorations”. They spent about $6,000 on a new HVAC at that time also. So a normal person might think “eh, they’ll spend eight or nine grand on some stuff and that will be it”.
You’d be wrong. By August 2020, the new estimate was $500,000. [see page 20]
The CURRENT estimate is $1.3 million dollars. That’s $1,300,000.00 on an “event venue” that currently brings in MAYBE $10,000 per year in rental fees after expenses. So it will only take them 130 years to get their money back.
Only true shit head politicians could go from “a couple grand” to “$500,000” to “$1.3 million” and not blink an eye or maybe question if this was even REMOTELY a good use of funds. Clearly nobody learned a single thing from the $1.5 million Old City Hall debacle, because they are about to do the exact same thing AGAIN!
SKATE PARK:
WAY back in July 2020, a local school teacher heard a radio ad for a skate park/outreach center in California and thought “that would be cool!”
No, I am not joking. That is exactly how the whole thing started. Link to entire article is HERE. The name of her non-profit is “Wings of Eagles Outreach”.
Anyhow, we heard the usual nonsense about how this would be a public/private partnership and the usual hints were made that there would be private donations and volunteering…kind of like the “Bike and Hike” trail project that never went anywhere.
Initial skate park costs were said to be around $200,000. That was SO last year, though. NOW the estimate is $400,000 [see page 20] and I can guarantee you the final cost will be far higher.
Seeing as how “Wings of Eagles” had a grand total of $5,824 in their bank account at their last non-profit filing, something tells me they aren’t going to be shelling out hundreds of thousands to make this happen. No, that burden will fall on the taxpayers.
Personally, I think the skate park is a terrible idea. Mike White and Misti Talbert were huge champions of this thing. Time will tell if it was worth it or not.
But the fact remains that we went from “I heard an ad on the radio! Sounds cool” to $200,000 to the current $400,000 tells you all you need to know about how TJ Monroe operates and how little she values tax dollars.