Another terrible sales tax receipt showing for Lampasas – DOWN 5% for the month of February [row 585 as always]. The state of Texas as a whole ALSO contracted – but only by 1.72%. This makes NINE months of the last ten where Lampasas sales tax receipts contracted YoY.
The declines are also accelerating. The last four months have seen receipts decline 1.53%, 1.75%, 3.3% and now 5%.
Lampasas is already 3.3% lower year-to-date and we’re only 2 months into the new year. That represents $25,000 less money coming into City coffers versus the first two months of last year. At this rate, the City would see a $150,000 shortfall in receipts over the course of 2024.
Of course, we have the eclipse coming up, which should dump a huge pile of money into the City – much of which has already been spent on Porta-Potties, parking barricades and police overtime.
How did other cities fare?
Burnet: UP 2.76% – crushing us again (up 10% last month) – our sister city must have a REALLY good economic development director!
Marble Falls: UP 6.18% (down 2.81% last month)
Dallas:DOWN 40% (!!) – after a 33% increase last month. Clearly a large project or a calendar effect or something.
Then-mayor T.J. Monroe told the newspaper “typically, we are able to pay those down within the nine years and have saved a substantial amount of money”
[In fact, they JUST made a huge interest payment last month of nearly $118,000 on that 2022 CO issue – one of several payments made for FIVE previous borrowing sprees and totaling almost half a million bucks:]
I then wrote: “Perhaps. Or perhaps with the Fed finally raising rates back to normal….the City won’t have the ridiculous always-increasing sales tax and other tax revenue to rely on and find themselves screwed by the debt burden.”
Well, well, well. The mighty Industrial Park agreement is officially deader than Dillinger. No distilleries, no microbreweries, no barber shops or food trucks or dog parks or anything else!
In case you forgot how ridiculous the pipe dream was, here is a reminder from a couple years ago:
Gee – who would have guessed that everyone was high on Covid stimmy farts back then and none of this would ever actually happen?! Not me, of course!
So just to be clear, here is how it all went down:
#1 – Martin’s proposes some pie-in-the-sky to Mandy Walsh WAAYYYY back around November of 2021. It includes nonsense about food trucks, a park, a distillery and lots of other pipe dreams. I predicted immediately that none of this would ever happen. See HERE and also HERE.
#2 – October of 2022: The City quietly blows $45,000 preparing the park for Martin to create his “RV and Boat Storage” ‘business’ which would employ zero people. I had to dig a bit to even find out about that. About $38,000 was spent clearing the concrete and another $7,000 was paid to the City’s hack attorney J.C. Brown to draw up some boilerplate terms.
#4 – August of 2023: Martin’s decides to open a ‘cigar lounge’ – but does it on the town square instead of the Industrial Park as originally suggested. LOL. Squarely punching Finley in the scrotum with that move.
#4 – February 1, 2024 deadline comes and goes without a peep from anyone. I ask the City AND several City council members what is going on, since MRC is now in violation (again) of their agreement. I wait over FIVE weeks for somebody to figure out what’s going on, exactly.
#5 – March 6, 2024 the entire thing is officially dead, according to a City council member. In his words: “I can now tell you, the lease will be terminated.“
Incredible! SO in essence, the City blew $45,000 in order to make $1,200 in rent – and they are still stuck with the property. That sounds about right.
Just wait until they spend $2 million on the Hostess House “upgrade” to make $12,000 a year in rent! They’re geniuses, I tells ya!
I’m sure the Business Pork will turn out WAY better than this! BAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
I have no doubt he will be sporting his turquoise shirt and fake cowboy hat – the “formal” black one. I also have no doubt he’ll be hitting Oil Can Harry’s gay bar after the official festivities.
What in the hell is going on over at the Tucker ‘Ranch’?? Has Clayton been spending too much time with THESE guys?
He posted a “how-to” video yesterday on his ranch when he was all alone with some of the goats.
The questions is….”how-to” do what?!?
You really need to get out more, buddy. This is some disturbing goat porn!
You need someone like THIS instead. Perfect for you. ‘She’ is raging socialist idiot and is a “woman” despite ‘her’ penis. I love how ‘she’ informs us at the end that ‘she’ is a ‘trans woman’ – as if that wasn’t blatantly obvious from the photo.
Before jokes are made, I found this specimen on one of my Twitter sites – probably Garbage Humans or Single Moms Posting L’s – which are hilarious sites posting the downfall of Western civilization in real time.
Roland Fryer is an economics professor at Harvard.
He’s also black.
In 2016 he published a study showing police don’t disproportionately kill unarmed black men.
SJW outrage ensued.
He says “all hell broke loose,” and he was forced to go out in public with armed security after he published a studythat found no evidence of racial bias in police shootings.
When asked about her recent downfall for antisemitism and plagiarism, he said karma is a “motherfucker”
BLM spread a false narrative of police brutality and white supremacy. The false narrative of racist police officers hunting down black men is propaganda and disinformation, not supported by evidence.
A total of zero unarmed blacks were killed by police in Minneapolis in 2019 (where George Floyd died).
An unarmed black person is much more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a police officer.
Of course, these easily-researched facts did not stop a LOT of morons from running around in 2020 burning things to the ground or publicly calling the police “brutal terrorists” without a shred of proof. Some might even call that libelous!
Clearly, this woman is an insane, grifter scumbag. So are the fools who supported all that easily-disproved garbage. Then again, nobody ever accused Stephanie Fitzharris of being very smart…..
Fitzharris shown here with AI-generated extra chromosome
It was only a matter of time! Faced with the reality of ZERO prospects (even though the Governor’s office supposedly makes MULTIPLE RFI’s every single week, lol) the LEDC has apparently re-written some of the requirements for getting free shit in a pathetic attempt to get SOMEONE in there!
Here were the PREVIOUS requirements (circa 2019 – page 13)
Here is the LATEST iteration (page 5) – pretty much all the stringent stuff is gone:
So they started with “give us actual balance sheets and income statements from the last two years, federal income tax returns, financial pro-formas at LEAST 3-5 years looking forward”
NOW, it’s been lowered to “potential supporting documents MIGHT include business plans, financial statements, projected economic impacts…“
[Words like EXPECTED, POTENTIAL, MIGHT, PROJECTED are ALL red flags for bullshit. Clearly they learned NOTHING from Mike Cour or Martin’s Rod]
They no longer want any hard evidence that your business might actually be viable – they are fine with more bullshit pie-in-the-sky fantasies about microbreweries, distilleries, tire-recycling plants with 200 jobs and vocational schools.
Pathetic. This is Talbert’s legacy. A $7.3 million dollar comedy.
They are not in Europe or America to assimilate into your culture.
They are coming to replace your culture. Either defend your culture and your country or prepare to flee as a refugee to somewhere else. They will start a civil war when their numbers are large enough.
Muslim cultural enricher in UK says there is no verse in Koran that says Muslims must obey the democratic laws of the country they live in and encourages other Muslims to wage Jihad. pic.twitter.com/dAf1tiCCqm
By February 1st of this year, one of three things was supposed to happen regarding the Industrial Park agreement between the City and Martin’s Rod & Custom:
#1 – Martin’s purchase the land for $165,000 – in preparation for “Phase II” of their “agreement.” This included such fantasies as a microbrewery, distillery, barber shop and “other entrepreneurial possibilities.”
#2 – Martin’s was supposed to renegotiate the agreement because they weren’t ready to buy yet. This option seemed most likely to me from the very beginning.
#3 – Martin’s was supposed to provide a detailed “Phase II” plan wherein they explained in detail their plans for the “microbrewery” and “food trucks” and re-negotiate the original deal (i.e. City council would let them off the hook once again).
But according to the City secretary, NONE of these events had transpired as of the deadline passing. In their words, “there are no responsive documents.“
According to City documents [page 28], Stacey Ybarra herself met with Brant Martin on February 9th “regarding the Industrial Park.” What was the meeting about? That’s a secret for now. Last I checked, however, February 9th comes AFTER February 1st – which was the deadline for some action.
Will anything happen, now that the agreement has not only been violated repeatedly by Martin’s Rod but they have also missed the Feb 1st deadline for action? I’m guessing not. Hopefully we get an answer soon.
But as Warren Buffet says: when the tide goes out, you’ll find out who’s swimming naked. Well, the tide of money is now receding and tough decisions will have to be made.
LOL. Just kidding. Organizations like the City government and government-run schools NEVER have to tighten their belts. They just bleat on Facebook about how the taxpayer needs to cough up more dough…even as they do stupid shit like spend $2 million dollars on a new track and pay their superintendent $177,000$188,000 per year to teach zero kids.
Donna Clark – School Nurse – $73,129 $75,459 (my goodness! Putting Band-Aids on boo boos pays better than being an ICU nurse working 12 hour shifts!)
[Notice anything about the $802,000 in salaries above for eight people? None of them are actually teachers! Let’s look at some more…]
Christine Byrd – Counselor – $72,750$75,319
Christy Wiley – Teacher – $68,215 $70,816 (her husband once whined on Facebook that his wife “only makes $4 an hour when you add up all the hours she spends.” Which is utter nonsense, of course. Right Mike?)
Beverly Sue Spencer – Transportation – $75,280 $77,687
Kerri Holcomb – Librarian – $65,345 (are you kidding me?)No data available for 2023…fired?
Cathy Kuehne – Art teacher – $67,915 $71,015 (current City council member who “put herself at risk every day” during the Covid scamdemic)
Michael Kuehne – Teacher – $60,835 $63,335 (BLM supporter and pizza lover)
Anyways, you get the picture.
I have no beef with GOOD teachers who teach IMPORTANT subjects (math, science, reading) being paid well.
What I DO have a problem with is the bloated and ever-increasing mass of “administrators” and bullshit artists like Kathy Staruska getting automatic raises and growing larger every year.
I have talked about this in the past, but here it is in graphical representation AGAIN:
The number of “administrators” (paper pushers and Nerf job clowns) has increased FOUR TIMES FASTER than the student population. This is absolutely outrageous considering this number should have SHRUNK with the advent of computers, the Internet and other productivity-enhancing inventions.
[If you are good at math, you will realize immediately that “administrators” needs to be cut by roughly 75% to get it back in line. Think of that money THAT would save!!]
The teacher population has grown TWICE as fast as well. When I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, every single one of my classes had about 30 kids in it. Now it’s more like 20. Ergo, teachers are being paid more to deal with 33% LESS kids. So I can’t exactly cry a river there either, but at least they are in the classroom imparting knowledge – unlike these other clown horns.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) analyzes the skill requirements of different jobs, assigning each a pay grade based on the federal government’s General Schedule (GS). At the lowest skill levels—a GS-6 on the federal scale—teachers earn salaries about 26 percent higher than similar white-collar workers.
The average public school teaching position rated an 8.8 on the federal GS scale. After adjustment to reflect the time that teachers work outside the formal school day, the BLS data show that public school teachers on average receive salaries about 8 percent above similar private-sector jobs.
Contrary to myth, teachers are generally not foregoing higher salaries by staying in the classroom. Data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation show that teachers who change to non-teaching jobs take an average salary cut of about 3 percent. Studies using administrative records in Florida, Missouri, Georgia, and Montana showed similar results; the Georgia study found “strong evidence that very few of those who leave teaching take jobs that pay more than their salary as teachers.” [This data is from 2018 – the disparity is no doubt far larger now after the huge raises in recent years]
As the New York Timesreported, public-employee retirement and health benefits are bleeding dry state and local budgets. Neither the public nor teachers fully appreciates the costs of these programs. We forget the value of benefits when considering how teacher pay compares with private-sector work. And research suggests that teachers value deferred compensation less than upfront salary.
