2022/2023 Budget Increases Expenditures 14% Overall.

The 2022/2023 budget has been approved. Below are some highlights.

City council set the tax rate as high as possible without triggering an election ($0.3156).

Total debt obligations are $1.4 million – up from $660,000 just five years ago.

They will raise 9.37% MORE from taxes on existing properties this year. Hey, someone has to pay for Assistant to the City Manager Ryan Ward’s COLAs and regular raises and benefit increases and all that other stuff in appreciation for his 9 long months of service.

Hey wait….didn’t the City government get showered with almost $2,000,000 in Covid money AND huge sales tax increases thanks to inflation and reckless federal stimulus? Yes. Yes they did. Now shut up and give them 9.37% more, you chump.

The IT department will see a 14.7% increase!Going from $353,690 up to $407,120. Of that, $222,500 (55%) is for salaries and benefits.

This is also a 42% increase over the budget five years ago…or over 8% annual increases.

Another $14,000 is for “professional services”. That means companies like TSM Consulting who come in and do anything more complicated than backing up data or changing printer cartridges.

Interesting side note: the “professional services” line item used to be50% higheraround $21,600 – roughly 5 years ago. Suspiciously, it started decreasing not long after I publicly shamed them over and over four years ago about hiring a third-party to do their work for them. Now, am I saying I’m a hero for exposing the waste and thus saving the taxpayer tens of thousands of dollars when City council finally started asking questions? No. But you can feel free to say it if you like.

Economic Director will see a 8.6% salary increasefrom $77,769 up to $84,423. Salary PLUS benefits will go from $107,053 to $115,879 (up 8.2%).

Police Department sees a whopping 26% increase! This is from $2.866 million to $3.616 million. Cost increase over the last five years is 47% – or almost 10% per annum ($2.46 million to $3.61 million).

I’m guessing a lot of this is due to the idiotic notion that we need cops in every school with $85,000 cars parked out front to “deter” lunatics. I said it would have been cheaper to arm some teachers. The more expensive path always prevails in government.

Fire Department beats them ALL with a 37% increase! Wow. The went from $1.9 million to $2.6 million in one year. Over the last five years, it has DOUBLED from $1.3 million to $2.6 million. Five years. Doubled. Ouch.

I’m pretty sure they are getting a new fire truck over there too – which I THINK was either fully or partially paid for with federal “covid” recovery funds. So that was something like $800k they didn’t have to spend out of their own budget. Yet they STILL went up 37%! Makes you wonder where it all goes.

Streets – well there is ONE area the City government is being stingy with: the STREETS category. They will spend $169,000 less on them.It goes from $1.58 million down to $1.42 million – a 10% DECREASE.

It’s not like streets are a priority. Ryan Ward (assistant to the City manager) has already told us that “our employees are our number one priority“. Remember? I do. He said it right HERE. Streets cannot be a priority when jacking up $100,000 salaries is the actual priority, fool.

Total expenditures for the operating budget go from $12 million last year to $13.68 million this coming year –an increase of 14%

LEDC Gives Succinct Mission Statement at Last Council Meeting

An overly short and factually lacking history of the LEDC was given by EDC Director Mandy Walsh on Monday night, when she made her report before council [see video at 30:00 mark]

Of course, the REAL history has already been covered extensively by me starting HERE.

Anyways, here is the short version of their history:

They implemented a 1/4% sales tax in 1998 (24 years ago). This was “designed to bring higher-paying, primary jobs.”. They spent a ton of money. No jobs were created.

The end.

Let’s see how that all worked out for them, shall we?

COSTS

Money skimmed off as sales tax since inception:approximately $5,000,000.00

Money wasted on Business Pork Project (started in 2002): well over $7,100,000 and countinghas been spent or is committed on paying off all the debt. They borrowed $1.5 million earlier this year and ALSO pilfered $971,000 in Recovery Act funds from the City. Money that could have been spent of the citizens, rather than in Misti’s Sandbox over on 183 South.

Wow. A LOT of costs over the last 24 years. Surely we got some benefits?

BENEFITS

“High-paying, primary jobs created”:Zero

Businesses moved into ‘Business’ Park:Zero

I’m no super smart Director with a lot of letters after my name, but I think “zero” might not be that great?

Oh, forgot one more from the “cost” list:

Salary and benefits for Economic Director for the last 6 or 8 years to re-post Facebook posts from The Rolling Pin and Merk & Tilly’s:approximately $500,000

Another Smear Job Hoax Falls Apart – Matt Gaetz Edition

We should know the Marxist playbook by now. Smear your opponent, repeat lies and “leaks” for months or years on end until weak-minded fools like Haywire and Comrade Clayton take it as gospel.

Remember this from two years ago??

Guilty until proven innocent if you are on the right side of the political aisle.

But of course, it was just more bullshit like the Russia Hoax, the ‘vaccine’ hoax and all the rest.

Gee, I wonder if the scummy liberal media will trumpet this news loudly to the unwashed masses. Or will it be on page 37 in the bottom corner?

Scumbags.

Lots Of Insanity in Latest City Council Packets – Plus Review Of New Budget Coming…

I’ve been swamped with a million things in real life, almost all of them due to having a group of idiots destroying the country. Unfortunately, I don’t live off the government like Loose Haywire or off my parents like Comrade Clayton – so I have problems to solve daily. Those of you who live in the real world understand.

People like Comrade Clayton with no job and no responsibilities can waste away their days kissing the asses of Muslims – this is because he is a parasitic socialist who hates America and wants to see it destroyed. Letting in ass-backwards foreigners who also love socialism and refuse to assimilate into American culture is a great way to do that….

Reminder: this is the CHAIRMAN of the Lampasas Democrats.

Ass-backwards primitive who married her own brother
Marxist parasites and termites

A self-loathing American. Disgusting.

I’ll get to the latest City council meeting AND the brand new budget later this week.

Lib Vaxholes Were Wrong Big Time. Many Will Likely Pay With Their Lives. I’m Fine With That.

Remember WAAAAY back in 2021 when all the good little tyrants were screaming at us to get an unproven “vaccine”? The media (and the Joe Biden puppet) repeated the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” lie a few million times. All the dumb, fat, liberal middle-aged women (and Clayton Tucker) posted the same false stats on social media over and over:

Lots of evil libtards even demanded that anyone who refused the vax should be refused admittance to a hospital because “they were asking for it”. They dreamed out loud and laughed about “all the right wingers dying of Covid” so there would be none left at election time.

People’s lives were ruined when they were fired for refusing a “vaccine” that was untested and ultimately proved to be useless at protecting against Covid. People who needed organ transplants were denied because they refused the “vaccine”.

Well, as usual, our side was right all along.

Now you know why they want to seal the Pfizer test results for 55 years.

It’s now a well-know (if seldom acknowledged on liberal media) fact that the vaccine is causing a LOT of problems. The people who seem to catch it the most as the ones who are vaxxed and boosted the most. LARGE numbers of people who were “vaccinated” are dead. Since a large majority of those are probably liberals, I’m fine with that.

Useful idiot

Hopefully, the voter rolls on the D side of the ledger will be thinned out considerably over the next few years. Not that being dead ever stops Dems from voting.

Same Company That Appraised Business Pork at Ludicrous Valuation Was Previously Sued For….Inflating Land Values (Among Other Scumbaggery)!

I recently wrote about the ludicrous land valuations assigned to the Business Pork’s three tracts under development. The LEDC hired CBRE to do the appraisals and the price per acre they came up with was about 5x higher than anything in the surrounding area.

I have been digging around trying to find out who the hell CBRE is – I had never heard of them. I was thinking maybe it was a small company run by Misti Talbert’s brother-in-law or Mandy Walsh’s uncle or something.

Then I found this:

Credit Suisse nears $360 million deadline in fraud suit built on a hunch

I’ll let you go ahead and read it, but here is a nugget:

As a first step, the law firm filed a lawsuitaccusing the appraiser, CBRE, of artificially inflating land valuesand sales projections. In discovery, the firm obtained Credit Suisse’s communications about those appraisals.

Highland settled its lawsuit against CBRE, which did not admit liability, in 2013, but materials obtained during discovery emboldened the company to also sue Credit Suisse.

An original, lower appraisal by CBRE had been changed after pressure from Credit Suisse, Highland alleged.

The assertion was based in part on communication between CBRE appraiser William Acton and Credit Suisse’s Arik Prawer, one of the Credit Suisse bankers involved with the deal.

Wow.

Oh, and they were also sued for bid rigging in another case!

CBRE rigged bidding for a bank branch, fraud lawsuit alleges

I wondered why the LEDC used this CBRE company to appraise the land, when they had PREVIOUSLY used Herbst Real Estate to appraise this EXACT SAME LAND back in 2012.

I still don’t know why. Perhaps the LEDC can explain it to us someday.

Socialists Are Consumed With Envy

Politicians looking for ways to finance their extravagant spending increasingly complain that the wealthy aren’t paying their “fair share.”

It’s a trend in motion that is accelerating. This rising anti-wealth sentiment seems to be taking the US into dangerous territory.

We hear local socialist morons like Clayton Tucker and Bruce Haywood CONSTANTLY screaming for the rich to “pay their fair share!!”

 Once upon a time, government apologists liked to say that the rich had to be taxed in order to help the poor. That’s no longer the case. Nobody in America is starving. Even “poor” people have flat-screen TVs, air conditioning, and refrigerators. The poor live better than medieval royalty.

What’s going on is the institutionalization of envy, a terrible vice. It’s different from jealousy.

Jealousy says, “You have something that I want. I want one too. Give it to me.”

Envy says, “You have something that I want. If I can’t have it, I’ll destroy it, so you can’t have it either.” Envy is the moral flaw that underlies all socialist economic theories. Socialist feelings and morality underly the economic lies, race hatred, class hatred, sex antagonism, and political polarization tearing the US and the West apart. Envy and socialism have become secular religions. The country has been divided into two different and mutually antagonistic worldviews.

It’s a question of what’s right and wrong, what’s good and evil. It’s not a question of economics, about what’s more productive. This is a much more serious division. It amounts to a religious war between the Left, who want to overthrow and transform society, and the Right, who want to more-or-less maintain traditional values.

The Left is proposing all manner of outrageous, destructive, and genuinely stupid ideas. Free stuff for everybody. Not just food, shelter, schooling, and medical care provided at the expense of producers—which they’ve basically achieved. But now a guaranteed annual income. Everybody is supposed to get a thousand dollars a month, according to the silly twit and wannabe US president Andrew Yang. They won’t have to do anything, just exist, presumably hanging out at Starbucks playing with their iPhones all day. They’ll genuinely be what Yuval Noah Harari, the World Economic Forum’s mincing court intellectual, has called a permanent class of useless eaters [see: Bruce Haywood and Clayton Tucker]

At some point, however, people who work, create, produce, and believe in traditional values will react. Maybe they’ll explode in a violent counter-revolution. Maybe they’ll quietly go on strike, as did Ayn Rand’s heroes in “Atlas Shrugged.” Or maybe they’ll roll over and be transformed into serfs—which is what The Elite would prefer and expect. But something wicked this way comes.

The speech Biden gave on September 1 was intended to be shocking and disturbing. It mimicked a scene out of V for Vendetta or 1984. They went out of their way to have Biden deliver it in Philadelphia, where the US was founded, and use red lighting against a dark background to fan emotions. These people are serious. Biden’s words were full of hate and venom, calling out half the country as the enemy—the speech was unprecedented. It was a warning and an overt threat.

Look at the scene. The red background was over the top. Placing a couple of Marines in the background said, “I have power, and I’ll use it against the enemy.” Theatrics such as these are unprecedented. It amounted to a declaration of civil war. It was followed up by the outrageous raid on Trump’s home and the FBI perp-walking about 50 of his prominent supporters, with dawn raids, in subsequent days.

These people truly want to overturn society. They’re actually a reincarnation of the Jacobins and could turn out to be just as violent and dangerous.

They’re working to create an active environment of class warfare in the US. They’ve succeeded in fomenting race hatred, where people identify not as human beings but as people of color and anti-white. And sex warfare, wherein people are no longer either men or women—albeit a few with aberrations of varying degree—but as one or more of 50 or 60 genders.

These people hate the middle class, with their traditional cultural and religious values. This is why Trump is so popular and why they identify with him. It’s not because many of his ideas are particularly good; he’s essentially a populist with no philosophical center.

The elite and wannabe elitists hate Trump because he’s a cultural traditionalist. These people want to overthrow traditional culture itself and eliminate the middle class. In the ideal world of the WEF types, the vast majority of people, the deplorables, would be serfs.

I know it sounds outrageous, but that’s what’s on their minds. We’ve seen this before in history when Leftist intellectuals get control of real power, the apparatus of the State. They truly want to overturn the very basis of civilization. The Jacobins in revolutionary France, the Bolsheviks in Russia, the Nazis in Germany, the Maoists during China’s Great Cultural Revolution, and the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia.

It can happen anywhere when conditions are right. It seems to be happening now in the US and other Western countries.

Hmmm…Who Should I Believe?

I am facing a terrible conundrum. I can’t decide who to listen to about the economy. One side says it’s the best economy EVER! Another side says it’s dogshit and we’re about to go down the toilet into a worldwide recession.

THE EXPERTS:

On one side, we have the CEO of FedEx.

FedEx is a $53 billion company. Well, it was until this morning, anyway. They have 547,000 employees, have been around for 50 years, and are basically the lifeblood of the United States. They have 18,000 locations all over the planet. They have about 700 transport jets and 80,000 vehicles in their fleet.

On the other side we have this:

A 370-pound human skin tag named Bruce Haywood. Haywood has never run a business in his life, has zero employees, doesn’t work at the ripe old age of 58, is a parasite who lives on government checks and who stays up til 1am posting anti-American screeds on Facebook and then sleeping until noon. He exists thanks to the generosity of the taxpayer and his only contact with the “real” economy are the cashiers at Whataburger and Krab Kingz.

HE says the economy is kicking ass!

Hmmmmm. Very tough call. I think I’m gonna have to go with the guy who is NOT a retarded parade float.

LEDC Apparently Smoking Weed Now. Values “Business Pork” Land at $130,000 Per Acre.

I’m thinking that maybe the Business Park has been transformed into a Trailer Park and Bubbles is now in charge of everything…

That’s the only conclusion I can draw when the LEDC claims their land is now worth $130,000 per acre.

$520,000 divided by 4 give us $130,000.

I guess that means the Industrial Park over on 580 is worth over $700,000! That would be the Industrial Park that STILL sits empty despite us being told almost a year ago that Martin Custom & Rod was about to move in there and build a distillery and barber shop.

LOL. I’m sorry. I can never type those words without laughing my balls off. Maybe they were smoking the same shit last year when they came up with that one.

Just to give you an idea how ludicrous that valuation is, Mike Cour (Eco-Strong scumbag) tried to sell HIS 199 acres just a spit down the street from the Business Pork. He listed it at $6 million ($30k per acre), a pending sale fell through, he re-listed it at $5 million ($25k per acre) and it still sits there unsold.

That was about six months ago. Interest rates have done nothing but go up since then and land prices have cooled considerably. Forget about $130,000 per acre.

Now, land is eventually worth exactly what someone will pay for it – not a penny more. Perhaps some incredibly stupid Arab or Chinaman will come along and pay those prices, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

At those prices, the entire Business Pork is now worth between $19 million and $21 million, depending on who you believe when it comes to the actual acreage out there.

To which I say, it’s the weekend! Save me a toke!!

Hey, save me a toke!