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Mark It Zero, Dude!

Zero.

That is how many computer “experts” and IT Directors and Network Administrators the town of Kaufman, TX currently employs.

Kaufman is yet another small town about our size…another three hour drive up the road. Their median income is about 15% higher than ours and they are slightly larger. All in all, a decent comparison. Seeing those numbers, you’d think they would probably spend as much or more on a “technology” department than Lampasas does. Wrong.

How can this be?? I emailed the Kaufman city manager, Mike Slye, and asked him this very question. His answer verbatim from my email inbox:

“Third-party contract for IT services”

Oh….you mean like how our IT Director Monica Wright calls TSM Consulting or Cardinal Tracking or some dude named Neil Caldwell to do her work for her because she is completely inept and possesses no network certifications at all…just like our SECOND technology clown Kristy Acevedo?? You mean like how the city hands TSM Consulting $1,800 per month, every month, year in and year out, to be on call for any networking problems?

Yeah, kinda like that…except they aren’t dumb enough to pay TWO bozos a six-figure sum to sit in a chair all day and make those calls, like we do. Somebody else probably spends 3 minutes making that call – like the assistant city manager or something.

In other words, we could jettison the two bozos (who have proven incapable in the first place) and cut out the middle-(wo)men and just have TSM Consulting do all the work they are probably doing anyways? What a novel idea.

PROS: This would save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars per year AND free up two new grocery baggers for HEB to hire.

CONS: Monica and Kristy get even more angry at me.

As you can see, this is a terrific trade-off for the average citizen taxpayer of Lampasas….and one we should all be willing to make.

“It’s Making My Head Spin How Many Activities We Could Do!”

I just had to post this. Every time Boobus Lampasicanus bellows about “how many activities” we could do with a huge, multi-million dollar civic center, I am reminded of another ill-advised construction project from the movie “Step Brothers“.

Two adult morons (sound familiar?) come up with the terrible idea to build bunk beds to free up floor space so they can do “lots and lots of activities”…right before they jump into bed and the whole thing crashes down on top of them.

I picture Bruce “The Rascal” Haywood as a very portly Will Ferrell stomping around in circles muttering about all the activities he has room for now…without ever going into any details. Finley is, of course, the poor Dad down the hall who has to put up with all this ridiculous shit.

Crockett, Texas Has a Civic Center! Probably Wish They Didn’t…

Being the local gadfly (look it up, Monica…) is hard and thankless work. (OK, not COMPLETELY thankless…those 27 of you who thank me in private really help keep me going). While the rest of you were busy eating Spring Ho turkey legs and posting drunken Facebook videos, I was combing through stats and budgets from other Texas towns our size so I can get an idea of how our government wastes so much money (*COUGH* Information Systems Department *COUGH**COUGH business park *COUGH*)

I get my candidate towns from a list found HERE. I stumbled upon Crockett Texas – a similar-sized town about three hours from here. As I was eyeing their budget (and noticing they had NO Tech Department at all, let alone TWO tech bozo clowns on payroll), I saw a line item for “civic center” and had to do a double take. The first tiny town I picked randomly actually was stupid enough to do the civic center thing??

Yep. Must be a town infested with Bruce Haywood clones. I shudder at the thought.

Amusingly, the annual operating budget for 2018 was $101,000 – which made me feel extremely smart, since I recently guestimated the operating cost of a Lampasas Civic Center “could easily run into six figures”. Care to guess what the revenues were? Bruce? Any other boobs? Do you even know what “revenues” are?

Revenues for 2018 were $15,000. For those of you mathematically challenged, that is an $86,000 loss every year. I can think of better ways to spend $86,000 per year. Roads, sewer and water come to mind.

Bruce, have you ever thought to yourself “I need to get to Crockett and support that local community!”…no, you haven’t. Just like nobody is going to rush to Lampasas just because they build a civic center.

A quick look at the calendar for this civic center shows page after page after page of….nothing.

According to the website, the center was built in 1987…so I’m guessing it DIDN’T cost the $5 million or so we would have to waste on a similar facility. I’m also guessing Crockett doesn’t have anything else going on there – unlike this town, which has an absurd number of parks, trails and fields to keep you occupied. Not to mention Hidden River right down the street, if a large space is needed.

So, Bruce and other Civic Center Boobs: do you STILL want to waste millions on a civic center that will very likely run a huge deficit every year and sit unused 97% of the time? I know it kills Bruce and other boobs to see piles of money sitting in city coffers unspent. But I have a solution for that too:

GIVE IT BACK TO THE TAXPAYERS. Feel free to LOWER the tax rates and decrease our effective rate. Pretty sure there is no law against that.

“Boobus Lampasicanus” Spotted at Town Meeting

Believe it or not, there are actually times I feel sorry for Finley and Misti. The latest local town hall meeting, where they had to politely listen to several morons spout idiotic ideas for wasting tax money is definitely one of those times. Just reading these ideas after the fact made me want to strangle a couple of people for having their head so far up their anus and wasting everyone’s time.

Let me start by explaining: I am of the firm belief that everyone is NOT entitled to their opinion just because they exist and breathe air – because most of those opinions are ill-informed, poorly researched or not thought through at all. They are wish lists compiled by morons who don’t know the first thing about cost benefit analysis.

For example: If I was sitting with a group of Intel engineers who were discussing options for their new 5 nanometer chip fabrication plant, and I insisted on wasting everyone’s time by getting my fair turn at the microphone just because I occupied a chair in the room….I would be a complete and total jerk-off because I know NOTHING about 5 nanometer chip engineering.

But knowing nothing about a topic and not thinking things through has never stopped the species known locally as Boobus Lampasicanus (the common Lampasas Boob) from spouting a bunch of moronic ideas at the town hall meetings.

I am going to name names and take verbal dumps on the heads of these boobs publicly, because I also believe that by pointing them out (rather than politely nodding my head in agreement) and ridiculing them, a lot of bad ideas might get nipped in the bud instead of never dying the death they deserve.

[NOTE: If morons were laughed at and their ideas immediately shot down instead of politely ignored and thus tacitly agreed too, we might not be in the mess we are in today as a country. Imagine if all the rational people ten years ago had laughed at the dangerous liberal boobs who suggested there are actually more than two genders….we would not have grown adult teachers in Texas and elsewhere this very minute giving credence to the ludicrous notion that people are “gender fluid” and there are more genders just than male and female. Nor would we have people being sued or fired for refusing to believe such absurd horseshit].

I am referring, of course, to the idea of a convention center or civic center for the tiny town of Lampasas.

This has to be one of the most idiotic wastes of money ever conceived. I have seen mentions of this in City Council minutes for YEARS. The numbers being thrown around are in the MILLIONS. Pretty sure I saw an estimate of $2.5 million and that was several years ago. It took our local government wizards $1.5 million just to renovate an existing structure [Old City Hall] far smaller than a convention center….so you can count on that $2.5 million ballooning into at LEAST $4 million.

Hell, the tithes to Pope Eckermann ALONE would be in the high six figures, I would guess. If the Pope can milk a water line design for $25,000, imagine the skim and nest feathering on a big project like a civic center – he’d probably be buying a second or third house with the proceeds. Don’t even get me started on the money Monica Can’t-Wright could waste on this with some kind of no-bid public-address system or computerized lighting.

Why does this bad idea keep resurfacing? Because morons like boobus Lampasicanus Bruce “The Rascal” Haywood stand up at a town meeting and spout nonsense like “such a facility would give Lampasas a great way to market itself as a destination and to attract tourists to spend money in the city“.

Are you shitting me?? Does this idiot ACTUALLY THINK people in, say, Austin are going to say to each other: “wow! Lampasas – that piss ant small town about 90 minutes from here – just built a 12,000 square foot convention center! Let’s get our asses up there and blow $500 on something…anything!”

No. They are not. They won’t even come from nearby Cove – since Cove already has a convention center, seeing as how they are FIVE TIMES bigger than we are. Feel free to hold all of your “events” at the Cove Convention Center, Bruce.

We know the COSTS of this monstrosity would likely be $4 million or even $5 million (that is not even counting the ANNUAL COST to run this thing – which could easily run up into six-figures). What would the BENEFITS be?

Good question. All I hear is boobs like Haywood yammer vague assertions about all the “activities” and “events” that could be held there.

LIKE WHAT??

They never specifically say. I’ll make a few guesses:

Weddings? Guess what? A private citizen built a gorgeous wedding facility (Hidden River) for millions of dollars already and it is a stone’s throw from downtown Lampasas. No need to replicate that. It was also done with private money. Imagine that: the free-market taking care of a perceived need without fleecing the taxpayer. Wow.

Concerts? You think Cher or Hootie and the Blowfish are going to drop in and play some shows for us, you idiot? No, they are not. PLUS there are ALREADY several music venues in town provided by PRIVATE citizens risking their own money. Putters & Gutters and Toupsie’s come to mind immediately. How many venues do you need, Bruce? You complete and utter yam bag.

“There is nothing to do here” – which many of the nitwits in this town will complain about until our sun goes supernova, despite having TONS to do for such a small town. We have a ridiculous number of public parks, sports fields and trails for such a small town – and they ALREADY all cost a lot of tax money to keep groomed and maintained. The aforementioned Putters & Gutters has about 25 different things to keep you entertained. I have NEVER seen Bruce Haywood stick his head into that place….and I have to think he’d be very hard to miss.

Rodeo? Well, Council has already wasted hundreds of thousands of tax dollars on THAT horrible idea years ago [580 sports complex]…and it is used maybe a couple times a year, as far as I see. Not to mention there is ALREADY a rodeo facility nearby which can be rented out for about $500 per day.

So let’s hear it Bruce! What are all the BENEFITS of this badly-conceived civic center idea you love so much, you unmitigated clown horn?

NEXT POST: we will dig into another town hall boobus Lampasicanus named Janet Crozier who wasted everyone’s time by complaining the city needs to squander more resources by expanding its recycling program.

Monica Can’t-Wright Has Trouble With Second-Grade Grammar

Oh goodness. It seems every internal City Hall Monica email I open is an embarrassment of grammar…not to mention more evidence of chicanery and outright lies when awarding a no-bid $95,000 contract to Azbell Electronics.

Dumping on her writing skills feels a little bit like pistol-whipping a blind kid, but after her decision to agitate me in a bar recently, I really have no choice but to keep this up.

As we can see below, yet again, she was in contact with poor Adam Comer from Broadcast Works (original bid $34,000 for the City Council chambers TVs and microphones). Adam eventually was quietly and inexplicably dropped and not allowed to bid a second time (despite being BY FAR the lowest bid the first time around)….ostensibly because Finley suddenly remembered Azbell was a “buy board” company.

The following was sent by Monica to Adam on December 19, 2016:

Adam, I haven’t talked to you in a while and wanted to touch base with you. So, it looks like we are getting geared up for the Chambers project again…finally. We should have a set of plans by January. I spoke with our City Manager today and he asked me about the project and asked that I touch base with you. I think that we will need to re-bid this project due to the number of things that has changed as well as some of our needs that have changed. Also, I would be willing to bet that the equipment that you quoted for us 2 years ago, is out of date. Please let me know if you are still interested in this project and how you would like to proceed. I do believe that there is a number of things that we can cut out of the original scope, therefore I think pricing will change. Respectfully Monica Wright IT Director City of Lampasas.

What can we glean from this absolute abortion of incorrect tenses, run-on sentences and unneeded commas? Three facts are impossible to dispute:

Number one: Monica doesn’t know the difference between HAS and HAVE. Nor does she know when to use IS versus ARE. These are things that every native-born American learns in second grade. Here is a proper usage:

“I HAVE fairly conclusive evidence that Monica Wright HAS no freaking idea what she is doing when it comes to writing emails OR fixing computers.”

Number two: City Manager Finley deGraffenried specifically asked her to touch base with Broadcast Works – which (once again) wrecks his argument that they didn’t need to re-bid this nearly $100,000 debacle due to some kind of “buy board” designation. She even used the word “re-bid” in her email.

Number three: Monica (shockingly) actually realizes pricing may have changed since the previous bid. Hopefully she is smart enough to also realize that pricing is almost always CHEAPER over time when it comes to tech stuff like TV sets, computers and cameras. Knowing this, it is bewildering to me that she didn’t blink an eye when Azbell Electronics charged the City $2,150 EACH for four 70-inch TV sets that were available at Wal-Mart for under $1000 last summer (yesterday I saw some 65” sets there for $600).

Not only does the price of tech go DOWN over time, but she also specifically mentions things we can cut out of the original scope! Which should have ALSO made this project cheaper. Between those two facts, Monica and City Hall should have been angling for a price FAR LESS than the original $34,000 bid they accepted from Broadcast Works two years earlier….yet somehow they ended up paying for a $95,000 NO-BID project from Azbell Electronics. It truly boggles the mind.

Coming soon: more grammatical diarrhea from Monica Can’t-Wright and her underling Kristy “The Joker” Acevedo.

Her Name Should Probably Be Monica Can’t-Wright

I have held back on some of the more embarrassing examples of Monica Wright’s ineptitude because they weren’t really germane (go look it up, Monica…..)

However, since she and her BFF (and underling) Kristy Acevedo decided to antagonize me and my guests in a bar recently, I think it’s fair to post them now.

The following is from an email Monica wrote on Jan 3, 2017 to Chris Atkinson (a Nolanville bureaucrat) regarding bids for the audio/visual system she would later hand to Azbell Electronics arbitrarily (ignoring the bidding process altogether). Remember, this is a grown, 40-something, supposedly-highly-educated IT Department Head communicating with the outside world:

Chris, I wanted to reach out to you regarding the vm that you left me regarding A/V. I am currently working on our first big A/V project for our new City Council Chambers. I have not went out for bid for it yet, however I do have a vendor that I have met with on several occasions that has provided me with great information as well as will be bidding the project. I don’t have much information for you right now being that we are still working on our scope for this project.

If you would like, I can forward his information to you. I’m sure he would be happy to talk to you about your project/needs.

Broadcast Works – Adam Comer – North Texas Area Manager – 903-509-2470 x106 broadcastworks.com

Besides the atrocious grammar unbecoming of even a fourth-grade hillbilly, this is also even MORE proof that Broadcast Works was quite involved in the (supposedly) upcoming bidding process. Monica was clearly SO impressed by Broadcast Works (original A/V system bid of $34,000), she even sent THEIR company/contact information out for a recommendation to Nolanville City government….NOT the company information for Azbell Electronics (who was eventually handed a no-bid contract for almost $100,000 for the A/V system).

What a bargain the taxpayers get for $105,000 per year with Monica Wright-Like-A-Child: zero computer network skills, zero writing skills, zero make-up skills and only works 44 weeks per year!

Two Clowns and a Dwarf Walk Into a Bar…

…which sounds like the start of a bad joke. Unfortunately it turned into reality a few nights ago when our two obscenely overpaid and under-qualified City of Lampasas IT Department clowns (Monica Wright and Kristy Acevedo) drunkenly accosted me at a local watering hole. My first thought was “my god, they look a lot older in real life…and how long does it take to spackle on that much clown makeup?”

Yes, I guess the gloves have to come off now, if you are going to drunkenly antagonize me and my guests in my private life. That includes you, Jack Harrell.

The spackled clowns slurred a bunch of incoherent half-thoughts at me, despite me repeatedly asking them to leave me and my guests alone and stop embarrassing themselves. I couldn’t make out most of it through the slurring and layers of makeup but it was something about posting their “private” information on a blog like this (?) I’m not sure. Most of it sounded like mosquitoes buzzing or maybe two old crows squawking as they fight over a McDonald’s french fry in the parking lot.

Either way I have a newsflash gals: everything you do for the city and/or post on Facebook is PUBLIC information. That includes your ridiculously generous salaries, your lack of network certifications, the low number of hours you actually work, the fact you signed off on a no-bid $95,000 monstrosity A/V system, the fact you hire TSM Consulting to do networking jobs FOR you at great expense to the taxpayer. All of it.

I was kind of surprised they kept pestering me so overtly since there are cameras all over the place in the bar and it is very clear who is pestering whom from the video recordings. After the sixth or seventh time I told them to buzz off, one clown’s boyfriend jumped in and stuck his stubby little finger in my face and did some more slurring about “don’t talk to my lady like that!” (?). I remember being momentarily confused because I was sitting on a bar stool and he was standing upright….yet his face was nearly level with mine as he yammered away.

Hey Jack? Just because your girlfriend is two inches taller than you and your hair fell out, don’t take it out on me. M’kay? I know it’s gotta be frustrating that no matter how many dumbbells you hoist, the tape measure will STILL read 5’8…just accept it and go hit the tanning bed or whatever it is you do all day. Cool? Thanks.

Apparently the clowns think I’m a big meanie for posting information that is readily available on the City of Lampasas website and easily requested by anyone and everyone, as it is public record and you are (over)paid by the taxpayer. Much like cockroaches, they would prefer to operate in the dark with nobody knowing what they do all day or how much it’s costing the taxpayer.

Stay tuned and grab some popcorn!!!

LEDC Hands Another $100,000 From “Business Park” Slush Fund to Pope Eckermann

Another ritualistic tithe has been handed to Pope Eckermann The Engineer – this time by the Lampasas Economic Development Corp. The LEDC is a non-profit group that takes large piles of tax money and sets them on fire in various imaginative ways – all in the name of “developing the Lampasas economy”.

This ritualistic destruction of tax money is performed by some of the same people who squander tax dollars over at City Council: Misti “Drunken Sailor” Talbert and TJ “No Insulting Nickname Yet” Monroe.

Some of the ways they have torched taxpayer money in the past include $8,000 to ‘develop an LEDC website’ and then directly handing Monica Wright $6,000 per year AND handing CivicPlus $1,575 per year to ‘manage’ said website, $767,768.00 (years ago) to Qro-Mex to run a water/waste water line to the still-non-existent “business park” which sits there as a 165-acre weed patch, $230,000.00 to run electricity to the same weed patch, close to $100,000 per year to the LEDC Director to, well, direct stuff (and go to countless useless conventions like TML, Save Your Town, Stand Up Rural America, plus workshops, round tables, brain storming and years of wasted time before finally deciding to pay Halff Associates $120,000 to just do the job for them) …..plus many, many, many thousands of dollars to repeatedly produce videos to “promote Lampasas” which are placed on YouTube, viewed 403 times by the LEDC and city employees and then promptly forgotten.

That’s just a taste of the waste.

But now, apparently in order to “do SOMETHING” on the 165-acre weed patch (after spinning their wheels for 7 years) and to throw good money after bad, the LEDC has decided to hand Pope Eckermann The Engineer $100,000 to “develop PART of the business park”. This is a STEAL compared to the $125,000 Pope Eckermann originally tried to squeeze out of the LEDC just a month earlier.

This bizarre compulsion to throw money at Pope Eckermann makes me wonder if he has compromising photos of members of LEDC and City Council. It simply boggles the mind.

What do we get for this six-figure payoff to the Pope? Topics of discussion included: project management (nice and vague), drainage analysis, the ever-present “geotech report”, fee schedule (?), project limits (??), bid phase services (???), approvals and permits, construction documents and a bunch of other buzz words that sound like about $8,000 of real work to an honest-working rube like myself who possesses no compromising photos of anybody, unfortunately.

We will delve into detailed history of LEDC money wasting soon – mainly focusing on this disastrous ‘business park” debacle.

Overpaid Parasites Want 4.4% Raise. Will Be Even More Overpaid.

From today’s Lampasas Dispatch:

Notice of Public Hearing on Lampasas Central Appraisal District Budget

The Lampasas Central Appraisal District will hold a public hearing on a proposed budget for the 2020 fiscal year.

The public hearing will be held June 20th at 4:00pm at 109 East Fifth Street, Lampasas Texas. A summary of the appraisal district follows:

Total amount of proposed budget: $557,116

Total amount of increase over current budget: $19,229

Number of employees compensated under the proposed budget: 7

If approved by the appraisal district board of directors at the public hearing, this proposed budget will take effect automatically unless disapproved by the governing bodies of the county, school districts, cities and towns served by the appraisal district.

[End notice]

The new budget proposes $285,000 in salaries versus last year’s $273,000. Of course, in 2017 the salaries were $227,000 – so we see a 20% increase in 3 years (6.8% salary increase per year, on average).

The “Chief Appraiser” wants a 2020 salary of $75,177…PLUS benefits of another $13,023 ($5,262 for retirement and $7,761 for health care) – for a grand total of OVER EIGHTY-EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS cost to the taxpayer every single year…and it will only go up from here.

So we learn a few things here:

These parasites want a 4.4% raise this year – despite the fact they create nothing and produce nothing.
These parasites will ask for your opinion on the matter at 4pm on a work day…when productive citizens are at their private-sector jobs, earning the very funds the parasites want to steal.
The City of Lampasas (I assume City council?) has the power to “disapprove” this proposed budget. Will they? [*update* – I am told they do not. Oh well…this will be approved. Taxpayer soaked again]
Somehow, the county appraisers are able to get by on $7,761 per year in health benefits, while the average City Hall benefit is nearly twice that (anywhere from $11,000 to $14,000).

So here we have some of these parasites earning over $80,000 in a town where over 51% of residents have “low to moderate income”. How do I know that over 51% of Lampasas residents have “low to moderate income”? Because Assistant City Manager Gary Cox inadvertently told us so last week.

You see, Gary applied for a $500,000 grant with the Texas Department of Agriculture recently. The money would come from the Fire, Ambulance and Services Truck (FAST) Fund. It is money to replace a fire truck. In order to qualify for the grant, more than 51% of the city’s residents must have low to moderate income.

So, we have over half the city being described as “low to moderate income” and at the same time, these appraisal district parasites think they deserve a 4.4% raise. That sounds pretty outrageous to me. It would be nice if City Council sent a message and voted against this increase….but something tells me that won’t happen with the drunken sailors in charge.

$1,500,000.00 “Wow Factor” Public Meeting Room Will Not Be Used For Big Public Meeting Next Month

To those who pay attention to such things, a public meeting has been announced for June 17th at 6pm so all the whiners and complainers can whine and complain about (1) Community Planning (i.e. the $120,000 consulting contract handed to Halff Associates) and (2) City of Lampasas Budget Input (i.e. how big of a raise will Finley and Monica get this year?)

Here is the punchline: this big, important community meeting will be held in a school cafeteria. Why is this so funny to me? Well, I have a memory longer than three weeks, as it turns out. Let’s rewind quickly to September 25th, 2018 (8 months ago). Finley was busy covering his butt trying to explain to the citizens how $1.5 million dollars was a bargain price for new Council chambers and how a no-bid $95,000 A/V system was the deal of the century.

Part of his cover-his-ass story was that this vanity project was NOT just for City employees and City Council! No, no, no! To use Finley’s own words from the article, the Misti/Finley “wow factor” debacle was ALSO to “allow more public participation in council meetings [and] also will provide a place for various community groups to meet. City Manager Finley deGraffenried said the City Council’s vision is to have a facility that encourages public participation and “that could be seen as a hub” for a variety of meetings, civic activities and community groups.”

I would say a public meeting about the budget and community planning CERTAINLY fits the description of a “civic activity/meeting for a community group”. Pretty much EXACTLY what Finley described in his newspaper puff-piece 8 months ago.

So why not have this important civic meeting in the fancy new $1,500,000.00 Misti Talbert “Wow factor!” vanity project? I’m guessing there is one simple reason: it STILL isn’t completed!!

How far overdue is this vanity project? The article tells us that as well:

Later in the same article, Finley states that ASJ Construction was “50 days into the 120-day project” and that was on September 25th, 2018. Which means there were supposedly about 70 days remaining. December 4th, 2018 would mark 70 days after Finley made his statement.

Clearly the project was not done on December 4th, 2018. Not even close. Seeing as how the City will NOT be holding this important community meeting there on June 17th, that means the ~~debacle~~ project is now SIX MONTHS LATE (in addition to being about $500,000 more than projected).

The ease with which they just decided to have this meeting in a cafeteria and the ability of the cafeteria to hold the huge throngs (ha ha!) of people that will show up begs another question: why do we need a $1.5 million meeting room in the first place if an existing school cafeteria works just fine? A very good question…one I have been asking since last year when this monstrosity was started.

I’ll tell you why….the cafeteria just doesn’t have that “wow factor”, ya big dummy! Luckily we have wise civic leaders like Misti “Drunken Sailor” Talbert to push such huge, bold, wasteful “wow factor” projects through to completion…even if it is $500,000 over budget and 6 months behind!