I may owe Monica Wright a partial apology! I have spent DOZENS of hours reading every page of the City Council minutes starting in January of 2013 (which are the very first minutes available on the website) looking for clues to the current A/V debacle….and let me tell you – there are some real nuggets in there. Waste and incompetence on a colossal scale. We are not talking $30,000 or $60,000 here and there anymore. We are talking in the millions now (between City Council and LEDC waste). Millions that could have been used to lower property taxes or fix the streets or fix water mains or beautify the parks and creek areas. Oh boy. Where to start?
Let’s start with this crazy fact: in August of 2014, Monica Wright DID get three bids for an A/V system for the new council chambers. Here is the screen shot for August 25, 2014:
Monica went out and got three bids and then recommended the lowest price – which was NOT Azbell and was just under $34,000 including warranty and training. City councilman Toups then moved to approve, it was seconded by then-councilwoman MISTI TALBERT (current mayor) and with a unanimous vote, the motion carried. Also present at this vote were Mike White and Finley deGraffenreid – who still both hold the positions today that they held during that meeting. Which REALLY makes me wonder why everybody was playing stupid last month when I asked REPEATEDLY and PUBLICLY why we only got one bid on the current $100,000.00 Azbell contract. Did Finley and Misti and Mike all forget completely that there actually WERE three bids and the lowest was for $34,000? I highly doubt it.
I have to say, I feel VERY justified now when I went insane over the current $100,000.00 cost – you can see right here, that is almost TRIPLE what is/was considered reasonable. I will also publicly apologize to Monica Wright for dumping 100% of this debacle in her lap – but I wonder WHY she has refused to mention any of this from day one, when I politely requested a meeting with her to discuss this. She did her job correctly and found a good price back in 2014…so why the silence all this time?
Now a ton of questions emerge: how did this number TRIPLE so quickly? Why did city council play stupid when I asked if there were other bids, when they knew damn good and well they DID get three bids? Did they know that if they gave me those three bid numbers, they would look even more idiotic now since they are paying close to $100,000.00 this year?
Much more to come – including city council buying 100 “stacking chairs” for almost $13,000 for a council chambers building that hadn’t even gotten out of the planning stages yet (but yes, they got two bids on the chairs!). Why did they spend nearly $13,000 on chairs before the building was even built, a sane person might ask? Actual answer as printed in the minutes: to spend our year-end funds.
My god. Can you screw up any worse? Can you be WORSE stewards of public funds? I wonder where those 100 chairs are currently being stored and how much they are paying to store them. Incredible waste and stupidity on display.