Author: admin

TJ Monroe Five Year Anniversary Of Being Wrong About Business Park

Another jog down memory lane….five years ago today in the Lampasas Dispatch. As a reminder, the corpse repository ‘business park’ still sits there an empty weed patch and TJ STILL sits on City council making poor decisions:

“Mrs. Monroe noted the Lampasas Economic Development Corp. is working with the business park south of town on U.S. Highway 183, and she said she hopes the site will attract good employers to Lampasas. [Council member TJ Monroe] – April 14, 2015

It has, in fact, attracted ZERO employers…good OR bad. The bill for that boondoggle is in the millions of dollars. It still looks like a useless weed patch and is nowhere NEAR ready.

These are the same people that think their judgement is so sound, they can ‘help’ local businesses during the Chinese virus scare. Ummmm….ok, sure.

City Council Meeting Synopsis – Updated LIVE

First off, a huge congratulations to whoever finally got smart a few weeks ago and realized they could use YouTube as essentially free video storage for City council meetings. Took you a few months…but somebody (probably not an IT person) used their head. Funny that Azbell reps, Monica and Kristy didn’t see that right away.

I’m going to try and do this every council meeting, going forward, so you can get the REAL dope – not the fluffy Dispatch version.

The big event was council arguing over how to help local businesses affected by the Chinese virus closings. Sounded like ‘how to hand out free money’ but I’ll admit I missed the first 8 minutes of the meeting.

Takeaways

(1) Mike, Mike, Mike….how the hell can Mike White NOT know sales tax receipts to the City will drop severely going forward?? Mike, you are a business owner. Have your sales been higher or lower the last 33 days? I know that personally, I’ve bought virtually nothing over the last month except for groceries – which are not taxable. Gas sales (and PRICE) are WAY down. Furniture stores…automobile sales…etc….all of those have essentially ceased. Mike’s thinking that the shelves were bare in Walmart and HEB and thus will INCREASE taxes is erroneous – since groceries aren’t taxed.

Perhaps I’m wrong and missing something, but I fail to see how sales tax receipts won’t be at least 20% lower than normal during this time and lower going forward.

(2) I get VERY VERY scared when City council starts talking about ‘helping businesses’ with money/incentives/grants/whatever. We have more than a few council members who have ZERO experience running a business and have no idea what the hell they are talking about. Judging from the way they have squandered millions in the past, I can only assume they will muck this up royally.

(3) The Small Business Administration is ALREADY running programs. The Feds are ALREADY pissing away $2 trillion on ‘help’. The governments at the federal, state and local level ALREADY spend nearly ONE TRILLION DOLLARS per year on welfare – which is a safety net ALREADY in place. The idea that Mandy Walsh (who has never run a business) or Delana Toups (ditto) or Chuck Harrison (ditto) are going to reinvent this wheel is laughable.

(4) Finley is now telling us that “they don’t sit on their hands” and they are still working behind the scenes thinking up ways to spend more money (CIP committee).

(5) Misti now patting herself and council members on the back for….well, for showing up, I guess.

Wow. Meeting over. That was fast. Nary a word about how the City will deal with reduced tax receipts going forward.

I’ll finish with this simple economic truism that is apparently lost on most: the government does NOT create wealth. It merely transfers from one entity to another. That’s it. All while taking a 30% administrative skim. The best thing government can do (state, local or federal) is GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY.

The best thing a City government can do is provide law enforcement, a court system, clean and reasonably priced water and keep the streets in shape – and do it all as efficiently and cheaply as possible. That’s IT. All the rest is bullshit and wheel spinning.

We don’t need $1.5 million City council chambers. We don’t need multi-million dollar business parks. We don’t need $96,000 A/V systems. We don’t need $183,000 bathrooms. And we SURE as hell don’t need Mandy Walsh and Finley deGraffenreid ‘fixing’ the local economy by randomly handing out tax dollars as “help”. Seriously…just get out of the way and let the free market work – and maybe stop the overkill of shutting down the entire economy by decree.

National Debt Jumps $700 Billion In 13 Days

I remember when $700 billion was a bad YEAR of deficits. We just did it in 13 days. That’s 3.5% of GDP in less than two weeks. I’m sure all you supposed fiscal conservatives out there are screaming bloody murder, right?

Right.

It was bad when Obama did the trillion dollar deficit thing but it’s just fine when Trump makes it $2.2 trillion, ammi right??

The national debt has jumped $2.2 TRILLION in ONE YEAR (4/9/19 through 4/9/20)!! Another record.

I’m left to wonder why I’ve had to pay taxes all these years when we can apparently (1) run massive multi-trillion dollar deficits forever and (2) allow the un-elected and privately held Federal Reserve to print trillions of currency units supposedly without consequence.

When the inflation inevitably comes, every dummy in the country will blame “big business” for screwing them when the REAL reason is average American dummies who think they can get something for nothing and that currency debasement and wealth are the same thing.

Five Years Ago Today – City Council Pipe Dreams…

Exactly FIVE YEARS ago today, this appeared in the Lampasas Dispatch from former (thank goodness) council member Wanda Bierschwale referring to the STILL CURRENTLY EMPTY corpse repository ‘business park’ they have wasted millions of dollars on:

“The incumbent said the city acquired the business park property several years ago but has lacked the infrastructure needed at the site. Soon, she said, the business park will be developed enough to be inviting to businesses. [Then-council-member Wanda Bierschwale] – April 10, 2015

Soon, eh? Soon like, hell will freeze over soon? Or pigs will fly soon?

I bring these up to remind the unwashed masses that these clowns have no idea what they are talking about 95% of the time and their grand visions ALWAYS fall flat and cost WAY more than advertised. The same applies today.

Remember that when they babble about ‘developing the economy’ by flushing hundreds of thousands of dollars down the toilet to people like Halff Associates and Pope Eckermann.

City To Waste $14,715 On Three Big Metal Letters To Attract Tourists From All Over. No, I’m Not Kidding

Boy, the Lampasas Economic Dunces Club (LEDC) has sure been hard at ‘work’ recently! You can bet that Mandy Walsh is still costing the taxpayer $100,000 per year despite there being no economic activity to “develop” or “direct”! They’ve been SO busy, in fact, that they didn’t bother to hold a March meeting! Therefore, the latest info we have on their wheel spinning are the minutes from January 15th! Three full months ago!

They usually hold their meetings in the new $1.5 million Fishbowl BUT they NEVER BOTHER to use the $96,000 A/V system to record their meetings – despite the fact that they handle mishandle hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Apparently they WILL actually meet next Wednesday but it will be by teleconference. So I’m guessing it will all be shrouded in even more secrecy than normal.

(Seems to me they should take a page out of City council’s book and live stream on YouTube – you know, maybe use that $96,000 A/V monstrosity more than 3 hours per month!)

[If you are a new reader, you can get a taste of the LEDC profligate ways HERE and HERE]

I’d love to know if they are STILL going to pay Pope Eckermann The Engineer $100,000 to further ‘develop’ the already ‘shovel-ready’ business park….seeing as how the economy is now cratering and will likely be toast for they next year and a half at LEAST. Even the LEDC can’t be stupid enough to think anyone is going to show up to that weed patch any time soon with “high-paying jobs”. LOL.

But they now have something almost as good! Three giant metal letters – LTX! I’ll pause while you all gasp in admiration over such a brilliant and original idea (I think Mandy picked it up at one of her many $5,000 three-day seminars she seems to attend monthly to get ideas to “revitalize” the downtown area).

THIS will bring the tourists in from Austin and Dallas!!

Anyways, the ORIGINAL idea was to use the $7,500 “prize” that was “won” by our City Council Karaoke Team (I’ll get to that at the end of the article**) to pay for these three letters.

[I must pause here to remind everyone that the Texas Municipal League Convention cost the Lampasas taxpayers roughly $4,000 per year for these people to attend and goof off for the weekend. So by my math, they actually LOST $500…but we’ll let them go ahead with ‘government math’ for now]

Alas, as is typical in government the final cost was closer to $15,000 (see pages 26 and 27)….and City council voted to loot one of their slush funds (the HOT fund – Hotel Occupancy Tax) to make up the difference.

I guess the theory is throngs of tourists will swarm here from ALL OVER Texas to get their picture taken with the LTX metal sign. They will then spend a few hundred thousand dollars at Eve’s Cafe (which I love, btw) and maybe one of those trinket shops. The state will THEN collect their sales tax and THEN they will send THAT back to Lampasas where it will stuff our coffers and we will actually MAKE money! Meanwhile the tourists will look at the photo a month later and wonder what the “L” stands for in LTX.

I calculate they should break even on the endeavor around August of 2047.

HOW THE MONEY WAS ‘WON’**

In October of 2018 and again in 2019, part of City council traveled (as usual) to the useless and expensive Texas Municipal League conference and ‘won’ a karaoke prize offered by Waste Connections. They ‘won’ $5,000 in 2018 and $2,500 last fall.

In what I assume is a complete and utter coincidence, Waste Connections’ trash hauling contract was JUST up for renewal a month or two ago. City council voted to renew this contract without seeking competing bids. Finley intimated it was just too much hassle to go out and get a bid from another trash hauler. Never mind that they did EXACTLY THAT three years ago [3/3/17 Dispatch – front page], which is how they ended up switching to Waste Connections in the FIRST PLACE…but I digress.

Toups, Talbert, and Kuehne – the ‘winners’ of the ‘prize’ – all sit on City council and voted YES on this decision. The contract, by the way, is worth roughly FIVE AND A HALF MILLION DOLLARS ($5,500,000.00)

I’m not accusing anyone of hanky panky or quid pro quo…just reporting the facts and observing incidents that happened fairly coincidentally. I leave it up to the reader to form their own opinions.

I will say this – whoever came up with this ‘prize’ idea over at Waste Connections is a complete genius: spend $7,500 and then get $5,500,000.00 contract.

So – just to sum up the series of events for those on the short bus and the IT Department:

  1. City council members ‘win’ $7,500 from Waste Connections after spending about $8,000 to attend the two conferences.
  2. ‘Winners’ pledge to spend that $7,500 buying big metal letters LTX
  3. Big metal letters actually end up costing almost $15,000
  4. HOT fund raided to make up difference
  5. Waste Connections awarded $5.5 MILLION trash contract without seeking bids

**UPDATE** – Here is a weird nugget: In the January 27, 2017 Dispatch [page 11] then-council-member Misti Talbert said the following about switching from Waste Management to Waste Connections: “City council is not unhappy with Waste Management but wants to see if it is possible to save money on trash collection”

Ahhhh….so back THEN it was worth it to check around for a better price just for the hell of it. But NOW, after winning a bribe prize from Waste Connections, you are perfectly happy NOT to bother looking around for a better price. Got it.

These politicians and bureaucrats are SO selfless, they ONLY spent an extra $295 on a vanity plate for the LTX sculpture too! Of course, no mention that the letters cost almost TWICE the amount of the bribe prize they took won from Waste Connections. Perhaps they should have added “Taxpayer” or “HOT Fund” to the vanity plate as well?

Peanut Gallery Dummies Get It Wrong…As Usual

I awoke to texts from a number of my sources around town that Misti Talbert’s ‘official’ FB page as mayor was shut down for some reason. Naturally, some of the less-than-intelligent Misti lovers immediately suggested that this was the work of that nefarious (look it up, peanut gallery) Lampasshole.

I have to laugh. For two reasons.

First, Misti HERSELF was whining just weeks ago about how social media should be shut down because of “all the hysteria and ignorance” about the virus (i.e. a few people were saying six weeks ago that maybe you should prep for this – Misti calls this “hysteria”)

You kind of got your wish, sugar plum.

[Of course, THEN Mayor Pendulum swung WAY too far the other way and wanted the entire planet shut down indefinitely, making the cure worse than the disease, in my opinion. Hilarious.]

I laugh for another reason: I spend all my time on here railing for MORE transparency in City government, in case you dummies haven’t noticed. Misti’s administration has withheld COUNTLESS items I have requested….the latest being data concerning City employee insurance claims costs. Everything these dummies post on Facebook is grist for my mill…it actually HELPS me expose them as charlatans and liars. Why the hell would I want their FB pages shut down?? I value the First Amendment highly – and trying to shut down a FB page would violate my principles. Peanut gallery idiots might not have any principles…but I do.

I guess some peanut gallery people just aren’t very bright.

Speaking of Facebook ignorance, those peanut gallery types are usually the exact same ones to fall for every moronic Facebook “fact” without checking it then look like dunces afterwards.

The type who posts ten times a day on Facebook – usually stupid memes that somebody else wrote and 100 people have already posted. They post the most awful cliches as if they are deep thinkers.

Such deep thinkers! Did you come up with that yourself?? Always talking down to everyone though! That part never changes.

Or they gossip about people then pretend they are ‘above all that’

When gossip meets hypocrite.

Or they may post holier-than-thou parenting tips even though they did an awful job with their own kids. I think we all know the type. The FakeBook types whose REAL lives bear zero resemblance to their FakeBook bullshit.

Typical peanut gallery for you!

Finley and His Finger Puppets Are Terrible Liars

You’d think Finley and his puppets would all be far better prevaricators (look it up, Monica) given the practice they’ve had. But you’d be wrong.

Just look at the latest fiasco with them denying me information about City employee health insurance claims:

August 4, 2017: Finance Director Moron-o tells the newspapers that City employee health insurance claims “have doubled over the last year“.

OK. Fine. What year is she referring to, exactly? She can’t possibly be talking about the 2016/2017 fiscal year since it isn’t over yet at the time of her statement to the newspaper. The fiscal year ends on September 30th for the City of Lampasas.

She must be talking about the 2015/2016 year compared to the 2014/2015 fiscal years, right?

Well, there are two problems with that. (1) Since they are telling me today that the 2017/2018 data is not available here NOW in April of 2020 (1.5 years after the fact), then how would the 2015/2016 data have been available to her back in August of 2017 – less than a year after fiscal 15/16 ended?

Because they are liars.

(2) Furthermore, if she IS comparing 2015/16 to 2014/15 then she must have had access to the 2014/15 data AND we know the number had to be around $350,000 in order for her $706,000 number (given to me for 2015/2016) to represent a “doubling of claims”.

Yet she sits there and tells me that the 2014/2015 data is not available. Another lie.

You know what I think? I think the 2014/2015 data was around $350,000 and she knows it. So does Finley. I think her “doubling of claims” was based on a comparison of 14/15 and 15/16. I think they have no interest in admitting this since it means the following must therefore be true:

City employee insurance claims jumped from $350,000 to $1.13 MILLION in just two fiscal years….therefore they have more than TRIPLED. This represents a 78% increase in claims PER YEAR during that 24 month period. Which is insane.

And even that $1.13 MILLION number is now 2.5 years old, so I’m sure it is even higher and more absurd now!

THAT is what all the secrecy and bullshit is about – a massive spike in insurance claims over those two fiscal years (and possibly more). In other words, as usual, transparency goes right out the window when it makes them look like profligate shit heels.

Let’s also not forget another obvious fact staring us in the face: since the City has around 100 to 110 employees, that works out to roughly $10,000 in insurance claims FOR EVERY SINGLE EMPLOYEE in one year. That is also insane.

Hey City council…..you dummies paying attention yet????

City Council Extends Lockdown to April 30th. Unless You’re a Church. Then It’s OK To Gather In Crowds

Never thought I’d see a meeting where Mike White was wrong and Kathy Kuehne was right, but these are crazy times indeed.

The issue? Allowing churches to flout the lockdown that everyone else is suffering through and allow them to hold ‘parking lot services’, whatever that means. Apparently on-line services are not good enough, according to the likes of Councilwoman Delana Toups. The congregation all HAVE TO BE ALLOWED to drive to the parking lot and sit in their cars watching…with the engines off (and presumably windows up to prevent viral spread), according to Finley.

Ironically, Delana is a public school teacher currently conducting classes five days a week over the Internet (LOL)….and that appears to be ‘good enough’ for her. Yet watching a religious service over the TV or Internet once a week just won’t cut it. Very weird.

But here is my big question: will the churches be allowed to “pass the plate” and collect money from everyone in their cars? NOBODY on City council asked that all-important question. Because if they DO, that kind of defeats Misti’s big plan that the rest of us are suffering to implement.

Call me a cynic, but I suspect the reason the churches want a parking lot service in the first place is because when people watch online, they can’t hand money to the guy with the basket or plate! Easter Sunday is this weekend and I bet those churches would be missing out on a LOT OF CHEDDAR!! It’s the Super Bowl of religious days and the churches want their cut.

I know, I know…I’m an asshole for even thinking that. But hey – 12 years of Catholic school taught me that the church is like any other business except they push guilt and then sell salvation….all while avoiding property taxes! I’m thinking of starting one myself, as a matter of fact.

But here’s the thing: I’m personally NOT religious at all…BUT I still enjoy attending services at Putters and Gutters or Memos on Sundays. Vodka is my god and greasy food is my communion….and I am being DENIED my right to congregate and worship! Yet the other churches are allowed to operate. I don’t care what you believe or where you congregate to hand over your money – but I’d like the ability to do the same.

Delana Toups is just fine with this hypocrisy. Oh well, at least the stupid Tree Police idea has been forgotten for the moment!

City Finance Director Moreno Either Lying or Terrible at Math…Perhaps Both.

It all started with this nugget I stumbled upon in the Lampasas Dispatch archives (Aug 4, 2017 page 5 column 4) during a City council discussion about the skyrocketing cost of health insurance premiums for City employees (also known as “benefits” – which Finley ALWAYS ignores during any and all discussions of City employee salaries, btw):

“Ms Moreno said premiums will not necessarily increase significantly each year, as she said the main factor is TOTAL HEALTH INSURANCE CLAIMS BY CITY EMPLOYEES. The big increase in premiums for the upcoming year, she said, is TIED TO CLAIMS which Ms Moreno said MORE THAN DOUBLED OVER THE LAST YEAR.” [emphasis mine]

Wow! A DOUBLING of insurance claims in one year. That sounded almost impossible to me, so I wanted to know the actual numbers. Also, if the main factor in the ever-skyrocketing health insurance premiums is CLAIMS by City employees, then maybe we need to have a discussion about WHY claims are doubling. Are there a lot of morbidly obese City employees? Chain smokers? If so, those sure sound like personal choices to me. Maybe the FAIR thing to do is pile more cost onto those people who incur them.

So I emailed my usual City contacts and made a formal records request. I asked for the dollar amount of TOTAL claims made by City employees for the years 2010 through 2019, inclusive. I figured a ten-year span would give me a good look at the trajectory of these costs.

First, I got a run-around about how this might violate patient privacy….which is absurd. I pointed out that the City Finance Director ALREADY opened her cake hole about this IN THE NEWSPAPER. So it hardly made sense that this was top-secret information.

Then, I FINALLY got a response from the City attorney, Jo Christy Brown (who has likely made a small fortune in billable hours to the City, thanks to my requests over the last couple of years being constantly stonewalled). JC gave me the following information:

Fiscal period 2015/2016: $706,186

Fiscal period 2016/2017: $1,113,635

She informed me that records before the 2015/16 period were “are not retained by the City” and that the 2018/2019 period was “not yet finalized”.

I asked about the 2017/2018 period in a response email, since she didn’t mention it. Oh, says JC Brown, “that amount is not available at this time either, according to research done by the City“

Yeah right. Bullshit. Not available two years after the fact??

So of course, my next email asks: Will it EVER be available? Is it just ‘not yet finalized’? Or ‘not retained by the City’ either? Which b.s. line would I get for that year?

Her response: I have no way of predicting that.

This is the point I start laughing at Misti Talbert’s yammering about “transparency in City government” she did on Feb 10th. I mean, really. Ya’ll wonder why I attack you relentlessly on your lies and obfuscation (look it up, Monica) – this is a PRIME example.

Of course, I refuse to take this bullshit as truth. I also see right away that the measly two years of data they give me shows a 58% increase in claims – not the 100% Moreno claims in the newspaper. So either Moreno is atrocious at math since 58% is nowhere NEAR 100% OR Moreno actually does have more data from past years and refuses to divulge it.

SO…I email Moreno (with a CC to Finley – the City manager) and ask her point blank about the discrepancy. I got a lot of “to the best of my knowledge” and “that information is no longer available”…blah, blah blah.

I pressed again by email and got no response for an entire week. I then emailed Moreno and Finley AGAIN to ask if my original email was received. JC Brown was quick to jump in and stonewall for them. I could almost picture Finley hiding behind his desk while JC bullshitted for him. JC tells me:

Your original inquiry seeking medical and life insurance data was received by the City on March 10th, and although your questions did not fall within the Texas Public Information Act, as a courtesy to you, the staff searched for data and asked that I provide you with the limited information that remained available to the staff.  I provided that to you via my correspondence dated March 23rd. No additional data will be provided.”

As a courtesy to me! How nice. How DARE the private taxpayer citizen disturb the parasites and loaches who suckle at their teat.

Of course, I strongly disagree that it doesn’t fall within the Texas Public Information Act: Moreno was discussing those figures IN THE NEWSPAPER.

Not to mention: City council SHOULD be using that very information to determine if they are being screwed by their insurance carrier every year during budgeting discussions.

Lastly, YOU JUST GAVE ME TWO YEARS OF DATA, so if it’s unethical to provide this info, then why provide any at all?

Therefore, my lawyer will once again go up against Finley and JC Brown.

It’s pathetic that the City is wasting money paying an attorney to spend time DENYING public information to the public. This is not the first time it has happened either. I know City council reads here. I wonder how they feel about tax dollars being wasted on denying information to the public.

I’ll dissect this further in the next post…and reveal further evidence that these clowns are lying.


Transparency In City Government Is a Bad Joke

I had a good laugh a few weeks ago when Mayor Talbert opined at the end of a City council meeting [go to the 1:26:45 mark and listen for 45 seconds] about how citizens should be able to ask department heads anything and get answers…that there should be complete transparency.

Her exact words: “I feel like (City) staff and Council oughta be tasked with being accountable to answer on the spot…and..uh…I would be comfortable doing that….that’s transparency at its finest…is…you know…we don’t put off a question, we answer it on the spot”

I chuckled because every single time I ask a department head (IT, LEDC, Finance, etc) OR even Finley himself a question that might actually make them look negligent, incompetent or profligate, ‘transparency’ goes right out the window. This is evidenced by my past questions about the no-bid Azbell A/V contract, the LEDC and ‘business park’ contracts, employee discipline questions, ransomware attack questions…..the list literally goes on and on.

In fact, this ENTIRE BLOG only exists because I asked IT DIRECTOR Monica Wright (July of 2018) a simple question about what appeared to be a ridiculously overpriced NO-BID audio/visual system from Azbell Electronics for the new Council chambers. Her response? To copy and paste a couple sentences from the Azbell bid sheet! When I pressed her, Finley took over immediately and shut down all lines of inquiry. Seems to be a pattern with all “department heads” – they aren’t actually ‘head’ of jack shit, but rather a Finley Finger Puppet dancing to his tune.

Well, I have apparently opened an whole NEW can of worms regarding the City’s health insurance premiums and payouts. I had recently politely requested information that is WELL WITHIN my rights as a taxpaying citizen and guess what? Finance Department head Yvonne Moreno and City manager Finley ‘Elmo” deGraffenreid are once again hiding behind their City attorney and stonewalling me.

When that happens, I just KNOW I am on to a big stinky pile of dogshit they prefer to keep hidden. Good thing I still have MY lawyer on retainer.

Details coming up very shortly! I know you all need SOMETHING to keep you entertained during quarantine. Until then, let’s watch Finley ‘Elmo’ deGraffenreid make the Seven Goldfish dance to his tune…