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I’m In The Wrong Line Of Work

Working in the private sector is truly for suckers. The only way to get ahead these days is:

(1) get a Nerf job like Assistant City Manager or Superintendent of a school system or a government IT Director with no credentials

OR…

(2) run a company that wildly overcharges that same government for a dogshit product that actually costs 25% of what you are charging…like Azbell Electronics or the company that is currently selling Hanna Springs Elementary a $67,404 intercom system.

And they wonder why there is “no money for teachers”. I did about 15 minutes of research and emailed three companies – and found one that offered me a wireless school intercom system for $1,800. No joke. Roughly THIRTY TIMES LESS EXPENSIVE.

Here is the latest joke – the skatepark plans:

I don’t think the bozos in government have the first clue as to how easy it is to whip up something like this nowadays with CAD software and a 22yo intern. SPA and NewLine likely have DOZENS of saved templates and they drag-and-drop different features onto the “plans”.

The above joke apparently took OVER a year to produce, cost $18,000 and took a SECOND company to come in and finish, apparently (NewLine Skateparks).

Money well spent! Almost as impressive as the ‘plans’ for the Hike & Bike trail that never came to fruition. Those guys have the right idea too!

Time to Admit Our Nation is Being Run by Domestic Terrorists and Traitors.

By Wayne Allyn Root

Stop trying to pretend this isn’t treason. It is. Stop trying to pretend this isn’t the purposeful, intentional destruction of America. It is.

Stop trying to pretend this is “politics as usual” or a “political disagreement.” It’s not. Stop trying to pretend everything is going to be all right. It’s not.

America is in a dire situation. I believe we are in the worst situation in the history of America. We are hanging by a thread. It isn’t over just yet. But it’s the 9^th inning and we’re down 8-0, with two outs. The situation is that dire.

We are dealing with radical communist traitors. Domestic terrorists and suicide bombers out to destroy the greatest country, economy and middle class in world history.

The time to act is now. Or we will never make it to 2024.

The GOP leadership is blind, deaf and dumb. They can’t see the forest for the trees. They can’t read the tea leaves. This isn’t right vs left. This is love of God, country and capitalism vs. radical communist traitors, hell bent on the destruction of America. This is sanity vs insane, wild-eyed, radical nutjobs.

Plain and simple, this is TREASON.

90% of GOP candidates running for office across America right now, have no clue how dire this situation is. Some are pure frauds. Some are RINOS. Some are dumb as a tree stump. Some are clueless and delusional. Many are bought and paid for by China- just like their Democrat counterparts.

It turns out Joe McCarthy was right, he was just early. The communist traitors are everywhere in government, political leadership, public education, universities, unions, the mainstream media, social media, Hollywood, judges, lawyers, even in the leadership ranks of the military and police. Communist traitors have infiltrated every level of government, society and industry.

And I know their plan. I learned it at Columbia University, Class of 1983. My classmate was Barack Obama. I believe Obama is now the leader carrying out this plan. He is the “shadow president of the United States”- ie operating from the shadows, while dummy dementia puppet Biden serves as decrepit front man.

And who is giving Obama the orders? The enemies of America – globalist, billionaire, meglo-maniac, psychopaths George Soros, Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum, Bill Gates and the Chinese Communist Party. Schwab, by the way, is not just a globalist who wants to make us all serfs, but also allegedly the son of one of Hitler’s right-hand men. That’s right, the billionaire son of an alleged Nazi is now trying to conquer America. My guess is he’s obsessed with finishing the job of his father. And George Soros is reported to be a Jew who handed over Jews to the Nazis as a boy. As a Jew myself, I can’t think of anything more repulsive.

You couldn’t make this stuff up. You couldn’t sell this in a Hollywood script. Hollywood would call it “preposterous and unbelievable.” But real life is stranger than fiction.

The “Cloward-Piven” plan was named after two Columbia communist professors. Their plan was getting everyone in America on welfare- thereby overwhelming the system, exploding the national debt and collapsing the economy. That would end capitalism.

Look around. It’s happening. Biden and Democrats are using open borders to fill our nation with millions of poverty-stricken illegal aliens with no skills or education- who will require cradle to grave welfare. As a bonus, this changes the entire demographics of America- with foreigners on welfare out-voting American citizens.

Worst of all is hyper-inflation. All communist dictators want to steal the people’s money and make them slaves, dependent on government. But with massive hyper-inflation they don’t even need to raise taxes. Inflation is a horrific invisible tax.

Soon the middle class will be starving and begging government to save them. That opens the door for government to pay for all your gas, home heating oil, groceries, rent and college tuition. Take it and you’re a slave for life. That’s the end of the middle class, the end of capitalism, and the end of America.

Throw in the purposeful destruction of the energy industry, supply chain dysfunction, and vaccine mandates that cost middle class Americans their jobs, and have made many Americans too sick to fight back, and soon we’re guaranteed to see massive food shortages, mass starvation, food riots and a breakdown of society. In the middle of all this, they want to take our guns away.

I repeat: We’re not going to make it to 2024.

This is TREASON. Biden and his handlers are radical communist traitors. They are domestic terrorists and suicide bombers. It’s time to take the gloves off. These people want us banned, censored, silenced, bankrupt, stripped of all property, stripped of all guns, imprisoned for our political beliefs, or dead. You can’t compromise with people who want you silenced or dead.

But the first step is to admit, THIS IS TREASON.

Wayne Allyn Root is known as “the Conservative Warrior.” Wayne’s new #1 bestselling book is out, “The Great Patriot Protest & Boycott Book.”Wayne is host of the nationally-syndicated “Wayne Allyn Root: Raw & Unfiltered” on USA Radio Network, daily from 6 PM to 9 PM EST and the “WAR RAW” podcast.

Finley Tries To Copy Lampasshole Skatepark Timeline To Cover Ass. Omits Important Items.

Well, City manager Finley DeGraffenreid appears to be trying to cover his rear end with this skate park debacle. I went into a detailed timeline on this two weeks ago – and now it appears that Finley is (coincidentally!) trying to do the very same with his OWN timeline to try and explain the mess (see page 10 through 19).

The whole section is titled “Discussion regarding design, costs and progression of the Campbell Park Skatepark” – which would leave you to believe it was an explanation about how the skate park went wildly overbudget and is a year overdue. You’d be wrong, of course. That’s because despite the title, Finley spills a good 60% of his ink babbling about the Pavilion project – which is not what we are talking about, is it Finley?

No, we are talking about the skate park debacle.

This is a classic Finley move I have seen many times – he piles a bunch of other shit onto what is being talked about to obfuscate and confuse the issue. More than once, I have been handed 600 or 800 pages of bullshit (at 10 cents per page) I didn’t actually request from the City, and somewhere in that mess is the truth.

He posted 47 different timeline items (page 10 through 19). Of those 47 items, 27 of them make mention of the Pavilion Project, which is a completely different project – they just happen to be in the same general area of the City: Campbell Park.

Why throw in all that extra nonsense? That is what you do when you are a $200,000 per year bureaucrat who has to look busy, busy, busy.

In fact, I think part of the problem was these two SEPARATE projects got intertwined early on. I have no idea why except to maybe make things more complicated later. Clearly Finley can’t walk (pavilion) and chew gum (skate park) at the same time.

In fact, the geo-tech engineers (Langford at cost of $6,400) drilled TWO SEPARATE holes for the geo-tech report for TWO SEPARATE projects.

The very first timeline admissions Finley makes (July 13, 2020 – page 10) is: “skatepark and pavilion have been on the CIP (Capital Improvement Projects) since 2015…the last two years the estimated cost has been $350,000“

He is ALREADY lumping them together to cause confusion. What he SHOULD have said is “skate park $200,000 and pavilion $150,000”, which is what the estimates actually were.

[Ironically, a few builders in town told me they could have done that pavilion project for WAY under the $175,000 they ended up spending]

Here is proof of that…proof that Finley keeps denying and ignoring. He lied right to Cathy “Pork Chop” Kuehne’s face when she asked if the skate park estimate started at $200,000 and he said “no”:

City Manager Tells Blatant Lie To Council Without Blinking

So already, Finley’s OWN little timeline contradicts what he told council about the skate park NEVER being estimated at $200,000. It most certainly was. If the original skate park estimate was $300,000 (as he keeps falsely repeating), then that would mean the pavilion part HAD TO BE only estimated at $50,000 – because, as he just told us, the TWO projects combined estimate was at $350,000.

[Finley pulled this same stunt with the Old City Hall disaster. To this DAY he repeats the lie that it “only” cost $1.02 million when the true cost was around $1.5 million]

He also previously mentioned SPA Skateparks and Lamco as being the top two selected contractors. What he did again was fail to mention that one of those (Lamco) was selected for the pavilion. He was STILL lumping both of these projects together, which not only makes for confusion but makes it almost impossible to separate out the costs for each from his bureaucratic ramblings.

Both projects should have been discussed and priced SEPARATELY from the first day. They weren’t.

But the most damning omission from Finley’s little timeline is to ONCE AGAIN fail to mention New Line Skateparks and why they are involved at all, at this point. Not a SINGLE mention of them in his timeline.

SPA Skateparks was the company selected for this job by Finley himself [December 25, 2020] – NOT New Line Skateparks.

SPA Skateparks is:

“a turnkey, design build contractor of truly successful public spaces through the creation of world class skateparks. Our team of active skateboarders consists of registered landscape architects, engineers, professional skatepark designers, skatepark public planning consultants, skatepark construction managers and specialized skatepark construction crews who have been perfecting site integrated, poured in place concrete skate parks since 2006“

That is straight from the SPA website.

‘Turnkey’ means they do it all. Design, consult, construct….everything.

What SHOULD have happened, is that the City goes to SPA and says “we have $250,000 for a skate park – what can we get for that?”

This is how normal people in the real world operate. If you are in the market for a house, you figure out how much you have to spend, tell a realtor that and they find houses in your price range. Apparently that kind of common sense is absent in Finley’s office, as it is in Misti Talbert’s brain.

SPA has been doing this for 16 years. Don’t tell me that if the City came to them and said “show us our options for $250,000”, they don’t have about a dozen templates to offer up. Templates they have accumulated over the last 16 years of building parks.

Instead, we got a wildly convoluted timeline of delays, cost increases, dropped balls, designs that were never unveiled, and now this “New Line Skateparks” coming out of nowhere to take over the “design” of this thing.

Absolute train wreck. I guess we’ll hear Finley explain it all on Monday night.

More LEDC Hype Fizzles Like a Fart In The Wind

Stop me if you’ve heard this one…

The LEDC hypes a bunch of “interest” in the Industrial Park or Business Park and it all turns out to be pie-in-the-sky bullshit as Lucy pulls the football away from Charlie Brown at the last second for the 100th time in a row:

I find it hard to believe that Mandy Walsh keeps falling for this over and over again. Then again, her $107,000 in salary and benefits kind of DEPENDS on her believing this shit over and over again. Otherwise she’d be out of a Nerf job and back working for the Houston Rockets or the Texas Renaissance Festival. All those letters after her name would mean nothing anymore.

Tough pill to swallow. Much easier to pretend that these fake businesses like Eco-Strong are viable prospects and then act surprised when it all crumbles like dog shit in the desert.

The latest football to be pulled? Most likely the “big plans” for the Industrial Park that included a “distillery/microbrewery and barber shop”, lol.

I’m referring to the Grand Plans of Martin Rod & Custom and their supposedly imminent move into the shitty 5.6-acre ‘industrial park’ the City has been sitting on since the earth cooled a few billion years ago:

That was from October of last year. Here we are EIGHT MONTHS LATER and the “deal” still isn’t done. According to the City, Martin’s attorneys are still sitting on the “agreement”. The first (and likely only) part of the “deal” is letting Martin use the “park” to charge people to store their boats and RVs.

Sure doesn’t sound like someone who is champing at the bit to build a “distillery”. Sounds like someone who is maybe about to take a pass on the “deal” to me. Either way, none of this other crap mentioned will likely ever come to fruition.

Ever.

Note that “several prospects were interested early on” – which, as readers here know, is the “lie that keeps on giving”:

The Lie That Keeps On Giving

Here is my prediction: there will be no primary jobs created. There will be no “microbrewery”. There will be no “multiple buildings”. The City wasted time and effort “researching flood plain maps” for nothing, as this is just more pie-in-the-sky bullshit.

I asked the City this week if the “agreement” was done yet. You’d think a simple agreement to let them rent out the spot to store RVs and boats would be pretty easy to negotiate. You’d be wrong. According to the City secretary:

“Staff actually followed up this week and it is still in the possession of Mr. Martin and his attorney. We are hopeful that it will be finalized soon.”

Hope, hope, and more hope. Will it ever amount to a hill of beans?

Don’t get your hopes up.

The “New Line Skatepark” Mystery

In the most recent Dispatch (front page), we are told:

“…the City has a contractual agreement with SPA Skateparks for design services. New Line Skateparks is partnering on the design project….Kanten Russell, team lead/design project manager for New Line Skateparks, presented the three existing design options for the park…”

The problem with this is that back in December 2020, Finley told us that “staff had received six proposals from contractors for the construction of the skate park…staff ranked Austin-based SPA Skateparks and Lampasas based Lamco Construction as the best qualified to complete the projects.”

New Line Skateparks was never mentioned. EVER.

Finley then told us in January and February of 2021 that “he has met with BOTH the skate park contractor and pavilion contractor to timing, scope and tentative project schedules” and that “preparations for skate park and pavilion construction in Campbell Park are underway.”

Again, NO MENTION OF NEW LINE SKATEPARKS.

In June 2021 (a YEAR AGO!!!) Finley told us that “Design build contractor selected, geo-tech completed – contractor preparing base bid for review by staff”.

Presumably, everything was in the hands of SPA Skateparks to get this thing done A YEAR AGO.

Then it all went off the rails.

Nothing happened for months and months! Finley again teased us in the newspapers in early September 2021 with the assurance that “Design documents for skate park, pavilion set for unveiling Sept. 27”

That never happened either.

Either SPA Skateparks completely screwed the pooch, or Finley did. It can only be one or the other.

NOW, here we are in June of 2022 and we are reading about how New Line Skateparks is “partnering” with SPA Skateparks on the design project. Maybe a better word is “bailing out”? Did SPA get in over their heads and have to bring on New Line Skateparks to actually do the work for them? If so, why in hell are we dealing with these SPA morons at all? Why pay for TWO design companies?

THIS is the question City council needs to ask next Monday: how and when exactly did New Line Skateparks get involved when they were never mentioned back in December 2020 as a “best qualified” company for this?

Bottom line: either SPA Skateparks or Finley deGraffenreid is responsible for a 12 to 15 month delay in this project – a delay that is costing the City hundreds of thousands of dollars.

More Thoughts On City Employee Salaries…

We already saw some of the very questionable (and self-serving) statements by ACM Ryan Ward and Finley deGraffenreid when it comes to some of our “underpaid” City Nerf job holders at the top of the City employee food chain – like (supposedly) Assistant City Managers and IT Directors.

I’d like to look at some remarks made by our Chief of Police and council member Herb Pearce.

Cummings seems to be saying that those nice retirement benefits are lost on the younger crowd – who want instant gratification, like so many of those under age 30. He seems to be implying we need to dangle a higher salary in front of them because they are too shortsighted to appreciate the massive 2-1 matching of retirement funds the City offers.

Well, ok then. I can almost see that point of view since that $10,000 they put away today will only buy the equivalent of maybe $3,000 worth of “stuff” when they retire – thanks to Bidenflation destroying the currency.

But if we go THAT route of higher salaries, then let’s just do away with the overly-generous benefits. After all – you just told us they don’t really appreciate or care about them. There is no rule anywhere that says you have to offer BOTH higher salary AND keep the ludicrous benefits. Out here in the real world, we make trade-offs because resources are limited. Maybe we give a new cop a choice: higher salary and lower benefits or vice-versa. But we make sure the TOTAL of both of them stays the same.

It also seems odd to me that it is so hard to attract new police officers. After all, every big city around (Austin, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, New York) has made headlines the last two years by DEFUNDING the police and shedding hundreds of officers. Seems to me that only INCREASES the supply of cops out there – not the opposite.

Herb Pearce then jumps in and points out the “continually rising cost of living” as some kind of justification for raises…

***600 new homes??? Good thing the City is charging an impact fee on each of them to help defray future expenses. Oh wait…***

As far as City council members go, I think Morris and Pearce are the only two with a functioning brain in their heads. I certainly don’t agree with Pearce on a few things (biz park), but at least he asks a lot of questions and seems open to persuasion by logic, reason and irrefutable facts. The other five goldfish are pretty much brain-dead in that regard.

However, his data on housing costs is way off. In Lampasas, it is more like $240,000 for an average, house – not the $330,000 he stated in the article. Here is the latest data from Zillow:

I am a stickler for accurate data, you may have noticed over the last 4 years.

But either way, I have to ask why it is the “right” of a police officer or a teacher to own a house? Hell, I rented until I was 42 years old. I liked renting. You think BUYING a house is expensive? Try maintaining one. Owning a home isn’t for everyone and it CERTAINLY isn’t an unalienable right for anyone – cop or no cop. We should have learned that back in 2008, but apparently we didn’t. I sure as hell don’t agree with using that criteria to decide teacher or cop pay. I don’t care if “a third year officer” can afford to buy a house. There is no shame in renting until you can.

When I was in my 20s (as many “new cops” or “new teachers” are), I was single and had three roommates to save money until I saved up enough to afford my own place. Of course, that was in the 1990s before the entire world turned into a bunch of entitled pussies who demanded instant gratification on everything from “free” college to “free” healthcare to a “livable wage” (whatever THAT means) and who just push a button to order food from 100 different restaurants.

But I digress.

Maybe we should be asking some other questions too. Like “what is the ‘correct’ number of police officers for a town our size? What is the ratio of cops to citizens for the rest of Texas? For the U.S.? For towns under 10,000 with a lot of old people who tend to not commit many crimes?

If we add three cops and the crime rate stays exactly the same, did we actually come out ahead? Isn’t it easier to pay EXISTING cops more overtime than to take on more bodies – bodies who come with the added expenses of MORE benefits?

I’m a BIG believer in the 80/20 rule. It’s fascinating how often it shows up in unexpected places. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that 20% of the town’s “known troublemakers” cause 80% of the problems. Maybe blindly adding more officers isn’t the answer. Maybe targeting those known shitbags is a more efficient way to do things.

Oh, and when these shitbags are caught, maybe the judges should PUT THEM IN JAIL instead of handing out the endless probations I see around here. THAT would be a good start too!

Food for thought, City council.

Sketchy Skate Park Timeline – More Lack of Transparency – Part II

We last left off around April 11th of this year in Part I. What happened after that?

April 29, 2022: DeGraffenried also provided council members with an update on the skate park, which is another item to be discussed during the May 19 workshop. “We did do some initial investigation regarding estimates for excavation and pad for that skate park,” he said. Estimates are $70,000 to $75,000, deGraffenried said, adding “that’s still a very significant cost, however it’s about 20-30% less than the skate park contractor estimated.”

He is just NOW doing “initial estimates”? Again, I ask what happened to “preparations for skate park and pavilion construction in Campbell Park are underway,” from 14 months ago??

May 24, 2022: City Manager Finley deGraffenried presented a capital improvement project budget that showed significant spikes in costs, including a $170,000 increase to the Campbell Park skate facility.

“The skate park started at $200,000, went to $300,000 and is now sitting at $370,000,” Councilwoman Catherine Kuehne said. “How did it jump like
that?”

Yes indeed, Pork Chop! How did that happen? Hey, maybe Wings of Eagles can hand over some of that “fundraising” money to defray costs! Just kidding.

What happened is that Finley got his mitts on it. He has a very long history of overpromising and under-delivering. Of course, this tendency was papered over and covered up by an idiot mayor for four years. A mayor who had her nose up his ass and considered him a “dear friend” instead of an accountable employee.

The bottom line is that the skate park project is AT LEAST 8 months behind schedule. Finley told us back in December of 2020 that he had narrowed down the contractors to SPA Skateparks and Lamco. Period.

THEN, after a huge delay of 5 months, broken promises on designs being unveiled in September of 2021, and preparations being “underway” in February of 2021, the ENTIRE “TIMELINE HAD TO BE REVISED” – and then New Line Skateparks appears out of nowhere to “partner” with SPA for the “design phase”.

This huge delay and changing/addition of yet ANOTHER contractor appears to have raised the cost significantly. But do you see anyone asking Finley questions about how this all happened? Nope. Finley is never to blame. It’s just “to be expected”, according to Chris Eicher.

Recent Events Only Reinforce Our Need For Gun Rights…

Liberty advocates will NEVER give up their guns. It’s not going to happen. We have drawn a line in the sand when it comes to the 2nd Amendment and we are not going to move, not even an inch.

It does not matter what legislation or executive orders Joe Biden promotes, and it does not matter if there are future criminal events involving firearms. There is no scenario in which we are going to hand over our ability to defend ourselves and rely on the government alone. All the indignant wailing and preaching from anti-gun leftists is for naught; they will get nothing.

Gun rights are integral to a free society because they act as a deterrent to potential government over-reach and authoritarianism. Tyrants might infiltrate politics and take over governments, and they might even THINK they have the ability to oppress the public, but they will never be quite sure they can get away with it as long as the public has the means to “reach out and touch them” from a distance. They will always have doubts and this is vital for freedom – When tyrants have doubts, liberty prevails.

I am certain that anti-gun interests WILL try to disarm the American people before 2030, simply because they must. They cannot achieve the implementation of the “Great Reset” or the “New World Order” (their terminology from their own mouths) without first taking away our ability to fight back. They know that if they do not disarm Americans they will eventually fail. It’s really that easy to understand; if we keep our guns we will win. If we let our guns be taken, we will lose.

One thing must be made abundantly clear in this debate: Gun crimes are irrelevant to gun rights. They do not matter in terms of the constitution, nor should they matter. Our rights supersede the potential for abuse by bad people, and they supersede the whims of government.

The political left seems to think that gun crime is all that matters. They obsess over every single tragedy not because they actually care about the victims or the families involved, but because they assume that each gun crime is a kind of currency that they can use to pay for the eventual purchase of the 2nd Amendment. They think they can buy the option to erase our gun rights using the lives of shooting victims as a trade.

I’m sorry I have to inform them, but that’s not how it works. That’s not how it will EVER work. And if they think they can force the issue, then there are millions of us in the liberty movement that will teach them a painful lesson in humility. There will come a day when they’ll wish they had been more reasonable and not turned to authoritarianism.

In the meantime, they will try every trick in the book to con the public into thinking that incremental measures or executive orders are needed as a means to save lives. They won’t save lives, they’ll only lead to the disarmament of the population, making it easier to subjugate us and eliminate resistance.

The key to understanding gun control laws is to accept the reality that gun grabbers have NO INTENTION of staying satisfied with “common sense” gun control; they will only be satisfied with gun confiscation. This is why no quarter can be given to them. No compromises. No diplomacy. Nothing.

History shows us that disarmament of any population or subset of a population is eventually followed by the oppression and often genocide of that same population. Statistically, disarmament has led to some of the worst mass murders in the history of humanity. We risk losing far more lives by giving up our guns than we risk by keeping our guns.

By extension, a common argument among gun grabbers is that other western nations have extensive gun restrictions and they don’t have tyranny. I beg to differ. As we recently witnessed with the covid mandates and the attempted vaccine passports, many governments from the EU to Australia and New Zealand took the mask off (pun intended) and showed their true totalitarian colors to the point that they even created covid camps where people were locked up without due process.

I would argue that had it not been for the growing opposition among conservatives in the US and in parts of Canada, the Covid mandate agenda would still be active today and most of our freedoms would be erased. The opposition in the US is the reason why medical tyranny was scrapped through most of the world. For if we can be free despite the existence of Covid, then so can everyone else.

And how were conservatives able to defeat the mandates? Ultimately, it’s because we have guns.

More Thoughts On Eco-Turd…

The more I think about it, the less sense it makes for Alan “private jet” Champagne to ship crumb rubber 2,200 miles to Lampasas just to stamp it into the exact same products he is ALREADY making in Alberta.

Like, why not just use the plant, equipment and labor you ALREADY HAVE up there in the Great White North to make all this shit and then ship THAT finished product 2,200 miles to your fellow weasel Mike Cour here in Lampasas?

The shipping costs should be approximately the same and you save millions by not building a second “manufacturing plant” in Lampasas. It makes no sense, unless…(and this is ALL conjecture on my part – I have no evidence for any of these musings. I’m just using logic and reason here – something lacking at the LEDC)….

#1 – The Alberta plant is about to go bankrupt. Maybe the Eco-Flex turd is about to go bust and Alan is covering it all up by saying he is “moving the headquarters to Texas”. This would maybe allow him to grab MORE free money. Mike Cour sure seemed eager to grab more money for “moving headquarters” back in 2020:

***Desperation is a stinky cologne, Mike***

Maybe all this “free” grant money comes with even more bonus cash if you “move a headquarters”. Who knows? But if the plant in Alberta was about to go tits-up, it would be a clever move to kill two birds with one stone.

#2 – There is some kind of huge tariff/tax on finished goods. Maybe the Canadian or U.S. government taxes the shit out of “finished goods” crossing the border but not so much on “commodity” inputs like crumb rubber. If the tax were big enough on Eco-Turd’s finished goods, it would save them a ton of money to just ship the crumb rubber to the U.S. and “manufacture” their stuff here.

If THAT is the case, then the LEDC should realize Eco-Turd is ALREADY getting a huge financial boost by avoiding these taxes and there is no need to hand them even more “free” stuff at the expense of the Lampasas taxpayer. These idiots will NEVER, EVER employ 200 people, so if THAT is the reason you’re throwing free shit at them, you better rethink your plan.

Ryan Ward – Assistant City Manager and Nerf Job Holder Informs Us That He Is Underpaid By 13%. In Reality He Is OVERPAID By 25%

Self-serving much?

In today’s Dispatch, we got to listen to Ryan Ward (who has been with the City for all of 151 days) tell us that his position is underpaid by 13%:

This “data” comes from the Texas MUNICIPAL League – an organization that exists only to serve government employees (NOT taxpayers) and upon which I have taken large shits in the past.

The “data” idiotically included towns that were supposedly “similar” to Lampasas – you know, like Marble Falls and Fredericksburg.

Unfortunately, Ryan Ward’s “data” is wildly contradicted by REAL data from Salary.com – an organization that is neutral and gives unbiased numbers based on REALITY (not cherry-picked municipalities where many residents own yachts and vineyards).

As I wrote 5 months ago, Ryan Ward is actually OVERPAID by roughly 25% – as his STARTING salary a few months ago was $110,000. According to a PREVIOUS Dispatch article, the national average for Assistant City Manager “typically falls between $72,536 and $96,545“:

I’m pretty sure Ryan Ward knew what he was going to get paid when he agreed to work here. They didn’t pull it out of a hat AFTER he signed the papers. Ergo, there is ZERO case for giving him any kind of raise for quite a while.

Also, there were THIRTY applicants for that job. Hardly what would happen if Lampasas was paying TOO LITTLE for the position.

Ryan also took a page out of Finley’s favorite playbook: only talking about SALARIES and never even mentioning the word “BENEFITS”. Well, I’ll mention it:

Between Finley (the City manager) and Ryan (his assistant) the two of them pull down $91,348 in benefits EVERY YEAR. That is on TOP of their combined $260,000 in salary AND a generous car and phone allowance (another $8,250).

That includes their generous 2-1 matching for retirement. When Ryan puts $7,000 into his pension, the City forks over ANOTHER $14,000 FOR him. That is REAL money but it is something Finley and Ryan try hard to ignore every summer in their ‘we’re underpaid’ rain dance they do for council.

The City has a generous paid-time-off and sick leave policy too! Which I have mentioned on more than one occasion – including a year ago when it was made more generous yet again:

**Finley ALSO gets 3 weeks paid vacation**

City Personnel Policy Changes: Mo Money…Lotsa Paid Time Off.

In fact, the word “benefits” never escaped Ward’s mouth during his presentation until Randy “Speedbump” Clark brought up the 2-1 matching thing and Ward was forced to admit it.

The report ALSO mentioned that our police chief pay is 7.9% HIGHER than average and our library director is 11.2% overpaid, among others:

Are they going to cut Jody’s salary by 8% next year? Are they going to tell Shanda Subia SHE is making 11% less next year? Something tells me that’ll never happen. They will only consider ‘adjustments’ to the UPSIDE, if history is any guide. So what is the point of this exercise?

Back in the old days, the saying for government workers was “great salary, great benefits, great job security – pick two”.

Most of the time, government workers weren’t paid outlandish salaries but they had incredible benefits and never got fired. Which they should be quite happy with. Especially considering the outrageous cost of health insurance now compared to 40 years ago. That benefit ALONE costs the Lampasas taxpayers about $1.2 MILLION per year for the city’s roughly 105 employees.

NOWADAYS, they get all three: great bennies and job security, AND salaries that are higher than their private-sector counterparts who are paying for all of this.

Hardly seems fair to the taxpayer who is footing the bill. City council has a chance to tap the brakes on this “automatic raises for everyone and every year” bullshit. Will they??