Our $140,000 per year (plus benefits) city manager has come up with some unique ideas NEVER before dreamed up by overpaid government bureaucrats: spend more money and raise more money!!
The Lampasas City Council has expressed interest in funding several renovation projects in the proposed Fiscal-Year 2022 budget to include the Hostess House, pavilion and skate park.
In August of last year, the estimate to fund approximately five projects totaled around $940,000.
Last Monday during a workshop session, City Manager Finley deGraffenried indicated the updated estimate increased to $1.9 million.
Hey, what’s a million bucks among friends, right? It was only a year ago they said it would be $940,000. You can’t expect a guy with years and years of experience and a $140,000 paycheck (plus benefits) to be able to predict the cost of stuff to within 150%. C’mon man!!
A HUGE chunk of that is the idiotic Hostess House “facelift” – which I said LONG AGO was going to be another boondoggle. They told us it just needed “a few minor repairs”. I laughed at that.
That was WAY back in October of 2019.
NOW, they are talking about spending $1.4 MILLION for those “minor decorations”. City Council buffoon Cathy Kuehne even said they should do it right, “even if it costs a little more”. Spoken like a woman who has spent her life collecting government paychecks!
Finley also suggested the City hire three new bodies – police, fire and a ridiculous “communications/IT” person. You know, because of all the new houses being built by developers being subsidized by hundreds of thousands of tax dollars from Misti Talbert and TJ Monroe.
Finally, they need to pay for all of this. Finley suggests……wait for it….raising electric and water rates. That is always the “go to” way to pay for shit. I mean, bumping up the rate by .002 per kilowatt-hour doesn’t sound like much, but it will add about $200,000 to the City coffers. He also suggests raising the water rate by $.05 per 1000 gallons. That would add about $160,000 to City coffers.
To summarize: hey, we were off by a million on our needless projects, we want to add three new bodies (PLUS benefits!!) AND we think we should soak the citizens for another $360,000 through higher utility rates.
Truly a great plan! Like a Swiss watch, if I understand it correctly.
I wanted to repost this a stand-alone post so nobody missed it way at the end of the previous post. I find it fitting that I post this on the two year anniversary of hackers wrecking about $40,000 of City equipment in a massive ransomware attack.
Hopefully, City council will read this thoroughly before acquiescing to Finley’s ridiculous suggestion that we need a combination “IT/Communications” person on the payroll. Trust me – the IT Department is underworked as it is.
The Story of an Underworked IT Department
About three years ago, when I was stewing about the IT Department blowing almost $100,000 on an A/V system for City council, I was contacted by a former City employee – a guy who worked under Monica in the job that Kristy Acevedo currently holds. I’ll call him Mister X. I met him for lunch in Round Rock as I had a hell of a lot of questions for him.
Here is the gist of what he told me:
#1 – Monica is wildly unqualified. The guy who was Monica’s underling BEFORE Mister X apparently quit because he couldn’t stand the fact that his “boss” didn’t know what she was doing. Apparently he left for a nice career in the private sector. This was about the same time I decided to file Open Records Requests for all of Monica’s certifications. She had none of the certs you would expect for an “IT Department Head”. If our IT Department head was more skilled, we likely wouldn’t be hiring TSM and other “consultants” all the time to actually do the work that needs doing.
#2 – Mister X told me that during his time with the City as Monica’s “network admin”, she was forced to take a leave of absence for family reasons for a couple of weeks. I know this is true because I know the circumstances behind it. So basically, Mister X was left on his own for several weeks AND he was still fairly new to the job.
One of the IT Department’s main jobs is “taking tickets” and completing whatever task is on them. For instance, the library may “write a ticket” saying they have a laptop that isn’t working and then either Monica or her underling go over there and try to solve the problem. This is probably 90% of their work. They get tickets from other departments (police, fire, library, City Hall administration, etc) and go solve the problem. In this way, you can see how they spend their time and how many tasks they completed.
Well, as it turns out, while Monica was gone and Mister X was in charge, he was absolutely FLYING through all the tickets. No tickets ever piled up and he was making short work of everything. Mind you, he was doing HIS job AND Monica’s job by himself.
Mister X told me that Monica did NOT like this development at all. She told him point blank to slow down and stop being so fast and efficient (I am paraphrasing here). She told him that she needed the network admin job to look harder and more complex because she wanted to add yet another employee to her “department” (sound familiar??) and that would be hard to do if ONE GUY was currently able to handle all the tickets thrown at him.
Let me repeat that: when Monica took a couple weeks off, the new guy was SO fast and efficient that Monica actually told him to slow it down because (a) it made her look bad and (b) it would hurt her case to Finley that she needed to hire another underling!!!
Now, you may call this hearsay. Maybe Mister X made ALL this up for no reason. Perhaps, but I don’t see why he would. Luckily, I have other evidence of Monica acting in a devious and self-serving way, so it makes me think that Mister X’s story is true as well. If it came down to it, I suppose we could always track down Mister X and get him to admit it again.
Now, why do I think the story is true? (Besides the fact that I have seen the IT Department incompetence for myself?). Because this isn’t the first time Monica pulled a sneaky stunt to serve her own interests. I have actual emails written by Monica during the A/V debacle that show she was trying to HIDE the true cost of the bloated system from City council.
“Monica Wright SPECIFICALLY discouraged Anelundi from giving any hard numbers during his council presentation on March 13, 2017…going so far as to write in her email: “as far as budget numbers go, we won’t mention that to City Council Monday night” then adding that “the City Manager wants Council to know what all is involved with this project….if they know the capabilities of the A/V system, the components and equipment needed to achieve what we want, hopefully their jaw will not drop when we ask for approval.”
“When the time came in July 2018 to actually go and ask for the ludicrous sum Azbell wanted for this vanity project, Monica appeared to have reservations about the cost again, writing in an email to Anelundi: “I am hoping they just award the contract and move on“
These emails were written by Monica herself. I had to hire a lawyer and make a lot of noise to get them. I’m sure Monica never thought those emails would see the light of day and I’m sure that now that I’m on the scene, they are all a LOT more careful with what they type onto City email servers. But as you can see, the damage is done.
City council: just say NO to Finley’s request for another IT worker. If you REALLY want to improve the department, fire Monica Wright, make Acevedo the IT specialist (no department title) and pay her a little bit more. If something is beyond her abilities, pay TSM to do it.
In other words, the exact same situation we have now but without the $103,000 cost of having Monica Wright sit at her desk all day typing emails and changing printer cartridges.
We ALREADY have two employees (nearly $200,000 in salary and benefits – see page 24)and essentially a third employee: TSM Consulting. TSM has been paid $1,800 a month for at LEAST the last five years to remain “on call” to do network support, even though we have a “network administrator” (Acevedo) whose job description is exactly that.
Month after month – $1,800 retainer to TSM signed by “MW” – Monica Wright
City handbook description of “Network Admin” job held by Acevedo
That $1,800 is just a retainer! When there is actual work to do, the City gets jammed for thousands more for TSM to do the job!
City billed ANOTHER $2,000 for the month of Feb 2016 to do troubleshooting! Of course, the word “troubleshooting” LITERALLY appears in Kristy Acevedo’s job description above.
Hard to believe?? In just the last 18 months, the City has paid TSM Consulting over $64,000! You can download the documents below:
“The council voted unanimously to purchase a cloud-based video storage system for the police department. The police department’s existing video storage server is starting to fail, Montgomery said. He added that if the city bought a new physical server instead of using the cloud-based system, the new server would last only about four years.
The cloud-based system will keep data secure, allow for backups and make video-related work more efficient, Montgomery and Information Technology Director Monica Wright said.
The initial cost of the cloud-based storage system is $7,000. In addition, the per-month storage cost – based on the amount of total data the police department stores now – will be about $270, Montgomery said. Recurring annual costs – including software updates and support — will be $10,620.”
So apparently the City paid seven grand AND a recurring $10,260 (likely to increase 5% per year, if history is any guide) to take those duties AWAY from Monica and Kristy – and hand them over to a more trustworthy third party.
Somebody with a brain clearly realized Monica should not be trusted with important stuff like the police servers. When Monica ruins City Hall equipment, it can be swept under the rug by a pliable City Manager…but if police servers get bungled, very bad things can happen. Like gigantic lawsuits over lost body cam footage and stuff like that.
Either way, the police department is probably one of the biggest, if not THE biggest user of technology in the City. I mean, it sure ain’t the dog pound or the golf course requiring all the server tech! Bottom line? HUGE reduction in duties for the IT Department.
STILL not convinced the IT Department is overstaffed and underworked? OK – one last story to get you there. I have kept this story up my sleeve for over three years, but maybe now is the time to reveal it.
**UPDATE** – The Story of an Underworked IT Department
About three years ago, when I was stewing about the IT Department blowing almost $100,000 on an A/V system for City council, I was contacted by a former City employee – a guy who worked under Monica in the job that Kristy Acevedo currently holds. I’ll call him Mister X. I met him for lunch in Round Rock as I had a hell of a lot of questions for him.
Here is the gist of what he told me:
#1 – Monica is wildly unqualified. The guy who was Monica’s underling BEFORE Mister X apparently quit because he couldn’t stand the fact that his “boss” didn’t know what she was doing. Apparently he left for a nice career in the private sector. This was about the same time I decided to file Open Records Requests for all of Monica’s certifications. She had none of the certs you would expect for an “IT Department Head”. So there is that. If our IT Department head was more skilled, we likely wouldn’t be hiring TSM and other “consultants” all the time to actually do the work that needs doing.
#2 – Mister X told me that during his time with the City as Monica’s “network admin”, she was forced to take a leave of absence for a couple of weeks. I know this is true because I know the circumstances behind it. So basically, Mister X was left on his own for several weeks AND he was still fairly new too the job.
One of the IT Departments main jobs is “taking tickets” and completing whatever task in on them. For instance, the library may “write a ticket” saying they have a laptop that isn’t working and then either Monica or her underling go over there and try to solve the problem. This is probably 90% of their work. They get tickets from other departments (police, fire, library, City Hall administration, etc) and go solve the problem. In this way, you can see how they spend their time and how many tasks they completed.
Well, as it turns out, while Monica was gone and Mister X was in charge, he was absolutely FLYING through all the tickets. No tickets ever piled up and he was making short work of everything. Mind you, he was doing HIS job AND Monica’s job by himself.
Mister X told me that Monica did NOT like this development at all. She told him point blank to slow down and stop being so fast and efficient (I am paraphrasing here). She told him that she needed the network admin job to look harder and more complex because she wanted to add yet another employee to her “department” (sound familiar??) and that would be hard to do if ONE GUY was currently able to handle all the tickets thrown at him.
Let me repeat that: when Monica took a couple weeks off, the new guy was SO fast and efficient that Monica actually told him to slow it down because (a) it made her look bad and (b) it would hurt her case to Finley that she needed to hire another underling!!!
Now, you may call this hearsay. Maybe Mister X made ALL this up for no reason. Perhaps. I don’t see why he would. But I have other evidence of Monica acting in a devious and self-serving way, so it makes me think that this story is also true. I suppose we could always get her former underling to admit it himself.
Now, why do I think the story is true? (Besides the fact that I have seen the incompetence for myself??). Because this isn’t the first time Monica pulled a sneaky stunt to serve her own interests. I have actual emails written by Monica during the A/V debacle that show she was trying to HIDE the true cost of the bloated system from City council.
“Monica Wright SPECIFICALLY discouraged Anelundi from giving any hard numbers during his council presentation on March 13, 2017…going so far as to write in her email: “as far as budget numbers go, we won’t mention that to City Council Monday night” then adding that “the City Manager wants Council to know what all is involved with this project….if they know the capabilities of the A/V system, the components and equipment needed to achieve what we want, hopefully their jaw will not drop when we ask for approval.”
“When the time came in July 2018 to actually go and ask for the ludicrous sum Azbell wanted for this vanity project, Monica appeared to have reservations about the cost again, writing in an email to Anelundi: “I am hoping they just award the contract and move on“
Finley is nothing if not predictable. Of course, the guy who wants to add three positions (and thus hundreds of thousands of dollars of expense) to the City payrolls is the SAME guy who refuses to pay the CURRENT lifeguards at the pool a penny more than minimum wage to attract MUCH NEEDED workers.
But I digress.
From yesterday’s Dispatch:
Combining two roles sounds ludicrous at first glance. What’s next? A combination golf pro and grave digger? Maybe a combination firefighter and library assistant?
But I suspect I know why they did this. There is NO WAY the IT Department needs another person. Somebody (Finley) realizes that is a ridiculous overreach – so instead of imposing a massive new expense on the IT Budget where it will look ridiculous to have FOUR people doing the work that two easily do now [yes FOUR – here is why], they instead make it a “combo” position so it sounds like they are doing a lot more – and they can stick the expense into another department.
Part One of this post will be dismantling the argument that we need a “communications” position at all. Then in Part Two, I’ll get into why we don’t need a FOURTH IT position in a town as small as ours.
PART I – COMMUNICATIONS POSITION IS AN UNNEEDED JOKE NERF JOB:
The Dispatch article tells us “the need for such a position surfaced during Winter Storm Uri, which kept the (IT) department busy informing the public with updates 24 hours a day for eight days while also handling the city’s fiber-optic infrastructure”
So much nonsense in one paragraph! Where to start??
[First of all, Uri was probably a “once-in-100-years” storm that we are unlikely to ever see again. To hold THAT up as a reason to fork over $100k for a new position is the height of idiocy]
What did the IT Department have to “inform the public” about for 24 hours per day? Closed roads? That’s the Streets Department or Police Department. Frozen pipes? That’s the Water/Wastewater Department. I’m guessing most of City Hall was sitting home due to the City being essentially shut down – just like the rest of us. To try and show the IT Department as working tirelessly “24 hours a day” to “inform the public” is a ridiculous joke. It did not happen.
Also, there are ALREADY about a DOZEN ways that City information is currently disseminated to the public right now. Let’s list a few of them:
The City website, the City Facebook page, the City TWITTER page (yes we have one), the Chamber of Commerce website, the Chamber of Commerce Facebook page, Lampasas County Breaking News Facebook page (they have 22,000 subscribers!), the Mayor’s Facebook page (Misti had this back in Feb 2021 during the storm – TJ Monroe can’t be bothered), Lampasas ISD Facebook page, Lampasas ISD website, Lampasas Dispatch Record website, Lampasas Radio Facebook page, local TV and the LEDC Facebook page AND website!!
What’s that, like a DOZEN different places all telling us the same things? I think we all knew early on that “the power is fucked up and failing a lot”. Having Monica Wright post it over and over on the City website is a prime example of time wasting “busy work”.
Hell, the LEDC Facebook page ALONE pretty much just copies and pastes posts from ALL those other pages. Mandy “Copy and Paste” Walsh’s entire JOB is pretty much doing just that. If anything, we have a MASSIVE duplication of effort and time wasting. If you need 15 different people to tell you the power is fucked up, then you are either brain dead or named Bruce Haywood.
Here is just a tiny sample of the hundreds of “reposts” Mandy does all the time – taking a post from somewhere else and then “copy paste” to the LEDC page:
And Mandy ALREADY costs the taxpayers over $100,000 to do her copying and pasting. The taxpayers need another Nerf job like “communications” director like we need a colostomy bag on our hips.
As for “handling the fiber-optic infrastructure”? I am reminded of The Big Lebowski when he was spewing bullshit to the kidnappers while “driving, talking on the phone and handling the money“
A great way to sound like you are busy when you aren’t really doing shit. THAT’S the IT department “handling the fiber“. But what does that mean, exactly?
The City didn’t have an answer for me except this: “I would refer to the Dispatch with regards to the meaning of the article” – so I guess I’ll email the reporter and ask what it means to be super busy “handling the fiber”!
Of course, a couple weeks later, the CDC admitted that was a pile of nonsense and retracted the entire thing – making Potato Head Steph look like a horse’s ass for the umpteenth time:
Wearing a mask may be sexy for YOU, as it obscures the view of those lovely pearly yellows you have. I’ll pass on wearing one, thanks:
Never take health advice from a clown in a muumuu
Don’t expect Potato Head to ever admit she fell for more hysterical Covid bullshit. She spends her entire life doing it. Just like her buddy Comrade Clayton Tucker:
Sometimes I almost feel sorry for her. Residing on the far left of the Bell Curve with Haywood and Tucker and Maxine Waters must be very depressing. Plus she also raised a little communist kid who lives in Oregon who looks like a huge disappointment to the family. I think I’d kill myself if that happened to me, so I try to have a little empathy.
But then I remember that this moron is a barely-disguised authoritarian who wants unvaccinated citizens to be shut out of society and any empathy I had vanishes immediately. Fuck her.
Two weeks ago, I posted about a hysterical moron in California joining the chorus of Covid lies with her own bullshit story of “hospitals overwhelmed” and “warzones” relayed to her by her brother in Miami.
I said then “when the data updates in two weeks, we will see that this girl’s story was at best a piece of histrionics, and at worse, a complete and total bullshit fabrication.“
Oops. Still stuck at ZERO, where it has been since June 10th – almost a MONTH ago.
The hysterical press will stop at NOTHING to push this narrative that Florida is in a shambles – because they’re threatened by Ron DeSantis, and realize he’s a more electable and effective version of Donald Trump. They know his policies have worked and are popular there, but they’re trying their damndest to convince the public otherwise.
Don’t believe it. Here is a nationwide snapshot of ICU bed usage (link here):
Markie Post passed away yesterday at the age of 70 from cancer.
I was always a HUGE Markie Post fan. She showed up over and over on all the popular shows when I was a kid – The Incredible Hulk, Buck Rogers, Love Boat, The A-Team, Fantasy Island, and of course Night Court.
She also popped up later as Cameron Diaz’s mother in “Something About Mary” in 1998 – still as attractive as ever at age 48.
She always seemed like a down-to-earth and likable woman – unlike most of Hollywood. It’s a shame that someone like her gets taken by cancer while human scum like Nancy Pelosi is still walking and talking at age 81. There is truly no justice.
The ONLY good thing about having a moron socialist with an IQ of around 85 in Congress is she is too stupid to pull off most of the trickery and bullshit her fellow Congress-critters get away with clean.
We saw this previously when she was caught “crying” over “kids in cages”. Turns out it was actually an empty parking lot.
Well, she just got busted again. Bruce Haywood will be devastated to know that most of his heroes are full of shit and don’t actually follow any of the rules the impose on us [see: Pelosi caught at hair salon]. This makes Bruce a classic “useful idiot”, just like his buddy Comrade Clayton Tucker.
Here is the socialist dummy caught once again faking mask obedience:
