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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 Also, I would be willing to bet that the equipment that you quoted for us 2 years ago, is out of date.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!

Old City Hall “Wow Factor” Debacle Keeps Adding Up

The new pile of City Council packets brought more checks written for the Old City Hall Misty Talbert “Wow Factor” Vanity Project! ASJ Construction and Azbell Electronics will be throwing a huge party this Christmas. Hope Misti and Finley are invited! Here are some of the sums spent on the ~~debacle~~ project. This is by no means exhaustive. I’m sure I missed some stuff.

JNW Architects (the ones who bungled all kinds of things over the years – April 13, 2015): $56,020 over 5 payments between 2015 and 2017. It may be higher, but some of the checks are for “consulting” and it’s hard to say they were for the OCH debacle.

Azbell Electronics: $94,674 (this is for some TVs and microphones for City Council to use). Mind you, this system could have been had for $34,000 from Broadcast Works – but the money tree out back was bursting with cash, so why not spend it?? OVERPAY of $60,000.

RKJ Construction: $128,400 on an elevator (Austin Elevator bid $96,500 for this part of the project, but Council-genius Harrison wanted to “keep it local” and yank an extra $32,000 off the money tree out back). Well done! OVERPAY of $32,000 (elevator STILL not installed).

RKJ Construction: $13,500 to demolish interior of OCH and remove debris. This is the only contract I’ve seen that seems like a fair price. Go figure.

$12,780 for 100 stackable chairs. Monica purchased these FOUR YEARS AGO ($127 per chair) despite City Council meetings rarely exceeding 30 people. Where are the chairs now? Who knows. OVERPAY of $7,000.

$15,558 on other furnishings.

$8,055 for even MORE furnishings (Amazon Capital Services – page 18)

$7,313 for curbing and a pad for generator.

$5,596 for “geotechnical engineering study” – sounds like kissing the ring of Pope Eckermann.

ASJ Construction: Tons of checks here since they are the main contractor. Checks in the amount of: $134,692 $143,336 $211,435 $166,301 $153,458 $42,069 $45,162 $45,714 $45,514 $26,000 $14,732… and we aren’t done yet!!

The capper? ASJ also just billed the city $11,310 for “reception desk – city hall“. Did we just pay over eleven thousand dollars for a $&*%(^* desk??? I think we did. WOW Factor!! OVERPAY $6000

$60,000 for a fire suppression system – no idea who sells and installs this. Fire Department?

$7,500 for “phone” and “fiber patch”

Roughly $12,000 to remove bats from the building.

$45,194 to re-roof a roof that I’m pretty sure JNW Architects said was
“structurally sound” three years earlier (Oct 2016 JNW was paid $18,500 for “structural analysis and provide documentation” of said analysis).

Tonight they will discuss spending $27,850 to “improve parking lot conditions behind City Hall”.

What does it all add up to? A LOT. I remember the good old days (circa 2015) when the Grayson/White/Toups crew didn’t even want to spend $400k on this. Look at them now – around $1,500,000.00 and counting! Well done!!

How Many Hours They Actually Put In

Since I started this whole journey with the Azbell Electronics no-bid $94,000 “Ferrari of A/V systems” contract in the IT Department, I thought it fitting to start there when it comes to ACTUAL hours worked.

After requesting a “payroll history report” for a certain IT Department head, I came up with the following. Remember, there are 26 pay periods of 80 hours each (40 hours per week for two weeks). Fifty-two weeks times 40 hours yields 2080 hours as the maximum. Of course, very few people work a 40 hour week for all 52 weeks of the year (except tons of small-business owners, but whatever).

We’ll assume two weeks vacation and some sick days thrown in there. So the normal private-sector worker probably works about 1950 hours per year, maybe. Here are the number of hours worked per year for the IT Department head:

2013 1827.5 hours (equivalent to over 6 weeks vacation)

2014 1798.5 hours (equivalent to over 7 weeks vacation)

2015 1730.5 hours (equivalent to 8.7 weeks vacation – well over 2 months)

2016 1711.5 hours (equivalent to 9.2 weeks vacation – 2 months plus a week)

2017 1736.5 hours (equivalent to 8.5 weeks vacation – two months)

2018 1725 hours (equivalent to 8.8 weeks vacation – well over two months)

So over just those 6 years, we see about 48 weeks off of work – or nearly a year! Work 5 full years – take almost a year off….fully paid, of course.

Or put differently, if an employee costs the taxpayer $110,000 per year but only puts in 1725 hours of “work”, it is costing the taxpayer almost $64 per hour of “work”.

This also doesn’t take into account the $1800 per month the City pays TSM Consulting to be on call for all the network issues that TWO City IT employees aren’t capable of doing. Nor does it count the thousands of dollars to Cardinal Tracking Inc. or random guys named Neil Cardwell. Nor does it count all the other chunks of money like the “appreciation pay” she gets at Christmas or the “longevity pay” she gets for X number of years polishing a seat with her rear end.

So not only is the pay FAR higher than the private sector…the hours are far less too! Gotta love it. The question remains: will Misti “Drunken Sailor” Talbert have the guts to freeze or even cut salaries this year? Or will they do what they always do…spend, spend, spend?

City Now Spends Quarter of a Million per MONTH on City Employee Benefits

Packets for the May 13th City Council meeting have been posted on-line. Of great interest to me are the large checks written monthly for health insurance premiums and retirement contributions.

For the first time (that I ever remember seeing) these now total OVER $250,000 PER MONTH – a run-rate of $3 MILLION per year.

Check #150608 to Scott & White – $118,245.76

Check #150616 to Texas Municipal Retirement System – $141,536.69

For a grand total of $259,782.45 for the month of April 2019….an annual run-rate of $3,117,389.40 or over $28,000 per employee (assuming 110 employees)

Do YOU, fellow tax slave, get to put away over $2,300 per MONTH for your retirement and health insurance? I highly doubt it.

So how fast has this expense item exploded over the last two administrations? I have that data too. EXACTLY four years ago, the numbers were as follows (page 65):

May 2015: Scott and White $86,307.20

May 2015: Texas Municipal Retirement System $78,120.81

For a grand total of $164,428.01 – a difference of $95,354.44 per MONTH. This represents an INCREASE of 58% in just four short years – or 14.5% increase PER YEAR!!

Now, the dummies in charge might not know about the Rule of 72, but I learned it in grade school. That rate of increase implies a DOUBLING of benefits every 5 years or so (5.12 to be precise). To say that is unsustainable is a huge understatement.

Will any “leaders” have the balls to cut spending? Or will it be more of the same?

Lampasas Government Personnel Costs – Nearing $80,000 Per Employee

City budgeting is slowly getting underway for the 2019-2020 fiscal year. So I thought it a good time to reflect on government worker pay. One good question I had: what are the TOTAL personnel costs for all city government workers?

That number was easy to find in 2015: according to the July 25th minutes of that year, there was a 4% increase to a grand total of $7,207,856

Since employee count seems to bounce between 100 and 110, I will be conservative and assume 110 employees – or $65,525.96 per employee.

What was the number for 2018? Tough to say, as I was unable to find the exact quote from Finley for that year. I am going to request that number from City Hall today. However, we can make an educated guess.

In July of 2018, as Misti “Drunken Sailor” Talbert was advocating salary increases for city workers, it was stated that each 1% increase impacted the taxpayer by $61,000 – which tells us that salary expenses were around $6,100,000 last budget.

We also know from Finley’s own admission (Aug 8, 2016) that “City worker benefits comprise 40.8% of salary expense” – 24.3% is retirement, FICA and workers comp while 16.5% is health insurance.

SO – we take $6,100,000 and multiply by 1.408 and we get $8,588,800 for total personnel costs (or a 19% increase in 3 years – a 6.4% increase per year)

If we are charitable and divide this by 110 employees, we come up with $78,080 per employee per year.

If we go with 100 city employees, we get $85,888 per year. I have no idea what the exact current headcount is for Lampasas City government but it is somewhere in that range.

That $78,000 per year is ridiculous enough…but wait til you see how many (or how few) hours some employees actually work each year! Coming soon….