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Council Meeting 5-11-20 – Recap

Wow – a long one and a doozy. I’ll summarize what I remember hearing yesterday on the recorded audio.

Parking commercial vehicles on residential streets. Apparently there are “ten to twenty” tractor trailers and semis being parked overnight all over town. This discussion lasted WAY longer than it should have. It comes down to the safety issue (fire trucks can’t get through) and an annoyance issue (noise complaints at 3am from the neighbors). They talked about permits, but that seems like nonsense to me. So it’s ok to annoy everyone around you as long as the City gets their $200 permit fee? Fuggetaboutit.

There has to be a free-market solution in there somewhere. Talk to Wal-Mart or Stripes about parking there for a fee. One thing there is PLENTY of around here is open space. Hell, maybe talk to the LEDC! They have 165 acres of “shovel-ready business park” sitting there unused. I also see a TON of open space in the parking lots of all the schools that are sitting there unused. Have ’em park there and charge the truck owners $200 a month or something. Mike White was on the correct side of this argument. Should have been over in 10 minutes.

2. Mandy Walsh took credit for handing out free money (‘grants’) from the LEDC to around 50 lucky businesses. To hear her tell it, these business owners wept with joy and hugged her and she was their salvation since they didn’t know if they could open back up again until Mandy’s $1,500 saved them! [Yes, it sounds ridiculous to me, too]. Ten minutes ago, I officially requested a list from the LEDC of all businesses that received grant money (along with the amount given). Not that I don’t trust you, Mandy, but since it IS tax dollars being handed out, we need to make sure there was no cronyism and waste...which seem to abound when it comes to other LEDC projects.

3. The City is discussing NOT opening the public swimming pools for the summer. That is an outrage. This “social distancing” bullshit is like a religion all of a sudden, despite the fact that it is snake oil and not science (kinda like the plastic straw bans). You CANNOT social distance in a pool. Kids need to be kids. They need to roughhouse, pick boogers, dunk each other underwater, wrassle, and BE KIDS. Mike White was AGAIN the voice of reason on this issue, while the Speed Bump (Randy Clark) was for keeping them closed. Mike White said “it is not our job to enforce social distancing…everyone on the planet knows about Wuhan Flu now and they can make their own decisions. We have already taken so much away from these kids with the lock downs“. I am totally paraphrasing Mike there, but when he said it I was cheering in my car and yelling “f*ck yes, Mike!!!”. [I again reiterate that Mike White resigning from council is a huge blow. He is oftentimes the ONLY voice of reason and logic].

This “shut down the pools” is just another step in the pussification of America. If you are too much of a scared rabbit to go to the pool, then don’t go. Kids ESPECIALLY are at very low risk of dying from the Wuhan Flu. Let the parents make the decision to go or not to go. Christ, it’s just like the ridiculous peanut allergy nonsense where peanuts are banned from a school of 500 kids because one kid can’t handle peanuts.

The Wuhan Flu is going to be with us a LONG time – probably forever. And yes, some people are going to die from it. Get used to that. It is very unlikely there will be a vaccine any time soon. Quite frankly, I’d rather get out there and spread it around and get it over with. If you are morbidly obese or over 65 you may want to be a lot more careful, but for the rest of humanity, let’s get on with it already.

I’ll be VERY keen to see what happens with schools in the fall. I’ll tell you this: if you don’t re-open the schools you are going to have a LOT of VERY pissed-off parents. We all pay a LOT of taxes to run these schools and having the kids “learning by Internet” is not going to cut it. Parents are not going to shell out THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS in property taxes and then have their kids underfoot all day long screwing around on the Internet. No way. There will be pitchforks and torches.

So, since you know you are going to open the schools in the fall or face riots, you may as well start now and open the pools and let these kids mingle and spread all their germs around. You DO realize that’s how immune systems work, right?? They need germs to practice on, to quote George Carlin.

ODDS AND ENDS: Also in the meeting, we learned that March sales tax receipts were UP 11%, which blows me away. We were basically shut down the last 12 days of March, so to see sales tax UP 11% was a real shocker. So I guess Mike White is correct so far and it is Mike – 1 and Lampasshole – 0 on those predictions. I guess we will know more in one month when the April sales tax numbers come out. I have to assume a massive drop-off then. We shall see.

I leave you with the great George Carlin and his germ lessons from NINE YEARS AGO but absolutely accurate today – LOTS of bad words in here!!! The two-minute mark onward is especially relevant today:

Council Meeting 5-12-20

Missed it last night. Some things are more important…like a killdeer hatch. Will listen and comment later.

LEDC Director Job Description

Although Mandy Walsh is already currently holding the title of LEDC Director, if she ever left (why would she??) and they needed a new person, I have provided a job description for you:

LEDC Director position available! Salary and benefits of over ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS PER YEAR! Yes, we know the average wage in Lampasas is about 65% LESS than that, but this is an IMPORTANT JOB!

Must be able to: create stupid hashtag pages like #lampasasrising which actually do nothing at all but make you THINK you are actually doing something. Must be able to take credit for every single business that opens in Lampasas, even though they would have opened with or without your existence. Must ALSO be able to IGNORE every business that closes (Cafe 281, Rutlands, Toupsie’s, Mamma Jeans, Chinese Buffet place, that chocolate/bookstore place that came and went, etc, etc, etc) and pretend that never happened.

Must be able to also hand out hundreds of thousands of dollars of other people’s money and then bask in the credit. Must also attend quasi-retarded conventions several times a year (we pay thousands of $$ for your food and lodging, though!) and be conversant in useless buzzwords like “identifying community assets” and “encourage collaboration”!

Sound like an easy and overpaid job? What’s the catch? There isn’t one!! This is a typical government make-work job! Apply now!

**UPDATED**

Today’s Dispatch has a blurb about our Economic Developer completing some course at the Texas Community Development Institute (CDI). I had zero comprehension of how far you could take this “Community Development” scam! Not only are there scammers in every small local government milking the taxpayer to “develop their economy” but there is an actual INSTITUTE giving out credentials for this horseshit! I view this is about as meaningful as a masters in “Gender Studies” or “Art History” or “Sociology” – a totally bogus and useless circle jerk propagated by a group of navel gazers.

Just take a look at the absolute gibberish they printed in the Dispatch [5/12/20 page 6]:

The PCED exam content
is based on comprehensive,
current and applicable
information for community
and economic development
practitioners with questions
to measure both the
understanding of content
and the ability to apply the
appropriate methods and
tools to specific community
situations.

When you read nonsensical bullshit like that, your antennae should go up and scream “useless scam alert!”. Something tells me the City probably paid for her to ‘earn’ this particular pile of horse manure as well. They never stop burning money at the LEDC!

116,000 Americans Died In a Pandemic.

The year was 1957.

Elvis’s new movie “Jailhouse Rock” was packing the theaters. The last episode of “I Love Lucy” aired on television. The show “West Side Story” held tryouts in Washington, D.C., and opened on Broadway in September. Ford’s new car the Edsel rolled off the assembly line. The Cold War with Russia was on and “In God We Trust” appeared on U.S. currency. The first Toys R Us store opened.

Also that year, the so-called Asian Flu killed 116,000 Americans. Here is the full summary from the Centers for Disease Control:

In February 1957, a new influenza A (H2N2) virus emerged in East Asia, triggering a pandemic (“Asian Flu”). This H2N2 virus was comprised of three different genes from an H2N2 virus that originated from an avian influenza A virus, including the H2 hemagglutinin and the N2 neuraminidase genes. It was first reported in Singapore in February 1957, Hong Kong in April 1957, and in coastal cities in the United States in summer 1957. The estimated number of deaths was 1.1 million worldwide and 116,000 in the United States.

Like the current pandemic, there was a demographic pattern to the deaths. It hit the elderly population with heart and lung disease. In a frightening twist, the virus could also be fatal for pregnant women. The infection rate was probably even higher than the Spanish flu of 1918 (675,000 Americans died from this), but this lowered the overall case fatality rate to 0.67%. A vaccine became available in late 1957 but was not widely distributed.

The population of the U.S. at the time was 172 million, which is a little more than half of the current population. Life expectancy was 69 as versus 78 today. Even with shorter lives, it was a healthier population with lower rates of obesity. To extrapolate the data to a counterfactual, we can conclude that this virus was more wicked than COVID-19 thus far.

What’s remarkable when we look back at this year, nothing was shut down. Restaurants, schools, theaters, sporting events, travel – everything continued without interruption. Without a 24-hour news cycle with thousands of news agencies and a billion websites hungry for traffic, mostly people paid no attention other than to keep basic hygiene. It was covered in the press as a medical problem. The notion that there was a political solution never occurred to anyone.

Again, this was a very serious flu, and it persisted for 10 years until it mutated to become the Hong Kong flu of 1968. The New York Times had some but not much coverage.

The mystery of why today vast numbers of governments around the world (but not all) have crushed economies, locked people under house arrest, wrecked business, spread despair, disregarded basic freedoms and rights will require years if not decades to sort out.

Is it the news cycle that is creating mass hysteria? Political ambition and arrogance? A decline in philosophical regard for freedom as the best system for dealing with crises? Most likely, the ultimate answer will look roughly like what historians say about the Great War (WWI): it was a perfect storm that created a calamity that no one intended at the outset.

For staying calm and treating the terrible Asian flu of 1957 as a medical problem to address with medical intelligence, rather than as an excuse to unleash Medieval-style brutality, this first postwar generation deserves our respect and admiration.

LEDC Grant Numbers Don’t Add Up. Is Grant Program Even Legal??

As usual with the LEDC, the rules, regulations, mission statements and math never seem to add up.

Recently, Mandy Walsh told us that the LEDC would be giving out “grants” (free money) to local businesses who were closed down because of the Wuhan virus. She claims they are able to do this by “authority of the EDC under Sec. 505.103, Texas Local Government Code” [page 5].

Great. So if you go LOOK UP Section 505.103 in the Texas Local Government Code, you get this:

“A Type B corporation may spend not more than 10 percent of the corporate revenues for promotional purposes.”

That is literally all it says. OK – fine.

Unfortunately, Mandy has said this program will hand out $100,000 in free money, presumably for “promotional purposes” since that is what Sec 505.103 says. The LEDC “corporate revenues” (sales taxes they skim from the citizens) are roughly $300,000 (according to their last available Form 990 Part VIII Section 12 = $309,746)

By my math, 10% of $309,746 is $30,974 NOT $100,000.

So, what say you Jo-Christy Brown?? Is this legal or what?? Sure doesn’t look like it. But I’m not a high-priced City attorney either….just a tax cow to be milked.

Let’s Talk About Public School Salaries

Since the school system is effectively shut down since mid-March and (as far as I have heard) everybody in the public school system is still getting a full paycheck, let’s take a look at some of the salaries, shall we? I’m inspired to do this because I saw one teacher’s moron of a husband belly-ache on Facebook that his “poor teacher wife only makes $4 an hour” – which is a bald-faced lie. But we’ll get to that moron in a future post.

Some fun facts: there were 548 employees in the LISD (2018 data) for roughly 3,330 students….a ratio of ONE employee for every SIX kids. Wow.

Let’s start with the Big Wigs In Charge:

Douglas Chane Rascoe sits at the top of the heap – he is the superintendent of the entire LISD. His salary is listed at $148,500 for his nine-month year but that is from the 2018 data. He is currently making $158,751.84

[ALL this data is from 2018 – which is the latest year posted. However, ALL of these are now much higher thanks to recent raises. Also, don’t forget to add AT LEAST $10,000 for medical benefits (probably more like $14,000 if the City of Lampasas is any indication)]

Shane Michael Jones is listed as “Business Manager” and he pulled down $107,790 back in 2018.

A true bureaucracy is not complete without a bunch of assistants and associates and deputies. Kevin Matthew Bott fills those shoes as “Asst/Assoc/Deputy Superintend” at $97,990

There are five principals listed:

Lynn Robert White – $95,240
Kevin Dana Holcomb – $88,526
Jessye Renee Cummings – $79,950
Lee Wesley Graham – $75,890
Leslie Brook Talamantes – $74,740

There are EIGHT Assistant Principals listed:

Young Duane Faude – $71,497
Raymond Norris Otterson – $69,122
Lindsay Rebecca Duhon – $67,300
Corey Jason Harris – $65,355
Gail Lori Ramsey – $63,412
Michael Clinton Burns – $62,664
Keele Jami Lelaine – $60,751
Leon Dick Parker – $43,764

So, those top 16 employees pull down $1.272 MILLION annually right off the bat…before we count a single teacher. Of course, this salary data is old so we can tack on 5% immediately and get $1.336 million. We can add another $160,000 for medical benefits at the LEAST (I am being very conservative here) for those 16 people and get close to $1.5 million annually. I haven’t even counted all the retirement benefits yet.

Next on the list is Scott Troy Rogers – listed as Teacher and Athletic Director. For those titles he receives $90,740. More than any principal or assistant principal save for Lynn Robert White.

Then we have Wanda Marie Bunting…listed as “Business Services Professional”. No clue whatsoever what that job entails but it sure pays well: $79,040 to be exact…and summers off, don’t forget!! This woman is paid almost 13% ABOVE the average and lives in little old Lampassy – where the cost of living is quite low.

The highest-salaried person listed as TEACHER only (no other titles) was Brad Goen at a whopping $77,041. Wow. He must be an outstanding teacher! Just kidding. I don’t think that’s how it works in a government-run monopoly. He must just be an old guy who has been there forever, right?? Remember…these are 2018 numbers!

Next on the teacher salary list is Ruben Guerrero at $68,692. I tried to Google this guy and find out what he teaches. All I found was newspaper articles of him being a track coach or something. I assume he must teach SOMETHING for that kind of dough, but I’ll be damned if I know what.

Michael Richard Hooper is next on the list. A Google search tells me this guy was a BAND DIRECTOR! But it looks like he jumped ship for Port Aransas ISD last year. What an ingrate! Guy was pulling down almost $70,000 in Lampasas and he bails out.

Jim Burkes is next down the line with a $67,891 salary for his nine months of effort.

To be continued….

Council Meeting Tonight – Live Updates

Don’t forget tonight’s council meeting! Sounds like there could be something afoot, according to today’s Radiogram:

“The City Council will meet in Executive Session after the regular meeting, “to receive and evaluate financial information received from a business prospect” and to discuss or deliberate financial information that the city has received from a business prospect that the city seeks to locate/stay/expand in or near the city with which the city is conducting economic development negotiations.Or to deliberate any offer of nay financial or other incentives to any business prospect as described above. The Council also may have a consultation with an attorney”

Sounds like Mandy and the gang may be handing out more tax dollars to private companies (*cough* S2M2 *cough*) to try and bribe them to come here (?). Never a good idea. The picture in my head of TJ Monroe “evaluating financial information” makes me laugh out loud.

5:25pm: technical difficulties?? I keep getting about:blank#blocked

5:35pm: Meeting already running…only 4 watching. Some idiot is sitting there in a mask talking to a room full of council members WITHOUT masks. Dr. James Cain? The more I hear from this guy over the last few weeks in the newspaper, the more I think he might be a moron. He’s essentially saying ALWAYS wear a mask as it can’t hurt. By that argument, let’s all wear spacesuits, since those can’t hurt either, right? I think Cain is a small-town doc who is having his one big moment in the sun…and he is milking it for all it’s worth. I also think all the hospitals benefit greatly from this panic the longer it goes on….so we know where their incentives lie. Mo’ money!! Mo’ money!!

5:40pm: Some new female in a mask telling us masks are cool! Right ladies? Fashion statement! I continue to laugh watching two medical ‘experts’ in masks yammer away while Toups and Kuehne sit WITHOUT MASKS three feet from each other. Funny how weeks ago, the experts all agreed that masks were useless. Imagine what the ‘experts’ will say tomorrow!

5:45pm: A THIRD Cain acolyte speaking now. A lot of cliche praise for us all pulling together and “doing it!”. Jesus. Enough. Give this guy the hook. Let’s get to the good stuff.

5:50pm: This guy STILL smoking his own navel lint. This is an informercial for Rollins Brook Hospital, methinks. No idea who this guy is but he is boring us all to tears. Put it in a memo and email it to City council, dildo. Let’s get on with it.

6:02pm: STILL going. He’s like my 80-year-old Mom writing a text. Long and boring with lots of sidetracks that WE DON’T CARE ABOUT!!!! Dork!

Here is what two other doctors say…and it directly contradicts the diarrhea I just listened to for 31 minutes:

If you’re healthy and you don’t have significant comorbidities and you know you’re not immunodeficient and you’re not elderly you should be able to go out without any gloves and without a mask. If you are those things you should either shelter in place or wear a mask and gloves. I don’t think everybody needs to wear the masks and gloves because it reduces your bacterial flora… and your bacterial flora and your viruses are your friends that protect you from other diseases [if they] end up going away and now you’re more likely to get opportunistic infections infections that are hoping you don’t have your good bugs fighting for you.

REGULAR MEETING:

6:15pm: We have a bursting Internet crowd of eleven people! The Speed Bump (Randy Clark) apologizing to City council for something. No idea what. Guess he didn’t fall in line over something? Who knows. Weird.

6:18pm: Finley bringing us up to date on the $120,000 Halff Associates consulting plan to Make Lampasas Great!! No mention of giant metal letters costing $15,000. That idea was FREE! I can’t help but notice Finley and the gang are not wearing masks. Cain must be out in the hallway madder than a wet hen!

6:20pm: Mandy Walsh tells council they have had a “positive response” to the free money being handed out. Who would have thunk??

Finley now praising Waste Connections for something or other. Here is a question: since the price of fuel has plummeted, I assume we will be getting a reduction in trash rates? I know the contract allows them to RAISE prices if fuel prices go UP. So do we all get a break when it goes THE OTHER WAY? Just asking, Finley!

Council now discussing relaxing the lock-down. Of course, this means zero since the Governor of the state already did this and HE is in charge…not Misti or Finley. Or Cain, for that matter.

Council now adjourning to executive session. This is where all the good stuff happens that the peons aren’t allowed to hear about. Sounds like the Radiogram was right – the City will be discussing “incentives” to businesses to expand here. Translation: give them some free stuff.

So, Since the Schools Were Only Open About Six Months This Year, We’ll All Be Seeing a Refund on Property Taxes, Right?

Before all the dummies tell me they are working just as hard at home….save it. They aren’t.

Not only that, public schools have an ENORMOUS number of paper-pusher-parasite types. They fall under “administrators” and they have grown FAR faster than the student body over the decades. As I have discussed before HERE and HERE.

Stuff like….”data processing”, which the Lampasas ISD spent over a MILLION DOLLARS on last year. Seems to me, with no students in school, there is a lot less ‘data’ to ‘process’. This is just one example.

If the LISD manages to spend just as much money this year as they do any other year, I would say that is a massive failure of management and proof this entire system is a scam run for the parasites and not for the kids.

Don’t forget – teachers were given a 7% increase in salaries for next year and the paper-pusher administrators were handed a 5% raise. That is a hell of a lot of money for a system that is making rumblings about not being able to open in the fall for face-to-face teaching. If they DON’T open normally in the fall, those raises should ALL be cancelled and the people in charge should seriously be looking to thin the herd of parasites at the administrative level.

Let’s face it: the under-18 crowd is at VERY low risk of dying of the Wuhan virus – so there is zero excuse to keep kids home from school. Teachers on the other hand….well, let’s just say obesity is a huge factor in Wuhan virus fatality rates and that is a very curable problem. Some of ya’ll have four months to hit that treadmill!

LEDC Trying To Buy Your Love and Distract From Millions Wasted Elsewhere

The LEDC is clearly trying to improve their image by handing out up to $100,000 in grants (free money) to local businesses hurt by the Wuhan virus forced closings. They will do this in chunks of up to a $3,000 maximum per business. You can see the details HERE [page 4 and 5].

It makes sense that they do this. After all, it would look pretty awful for Mandy Walsh to cost the taxpayers her usual $101,285 in salary [page 82] and benefits as LEDC ‘Director’ for doing nothing while the peons who pay her salary are suffering. The LEDC skims about $300,000 a year in sales taxes to play with on their pet projects….so I guess they figure they better throw a few crumbs to the unwashed masses. Otherwise, people might start taking notice of their mammoth waste.

Roughly $4 MILLION tax dollars skimmed in 18 years (2019 estimate at $300,000)

So, between the LEDC skim of $300,000 PLUS Mandy’s salary/benefits of over $101,000 PLUS all the ridiculous conventions she goes to (like the TML nonsense) – we are approaching maybe $420,000 PER YEAR being squandered.

Now, as much as I prefer some actual taxpayers getting a sliver of their taxes handed back to them, I would MUCH prefer the LEDC didn’t exist in the first place. They have wasted MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of dollars over the years with pretty much nothing to show for it.

So NOW they are going to assemble a special blue-ribbon panel (see video below) to decide who gets some $1000 or $3000 bones thrown to them. Who comprises this august group which will decide who gets some candy? Well, a lot of the same names you hear all the time: TJ Monroe (LOL)…Finley deGraffenreid…Mandy Walsh…Misti Talbert.

I picture something like this – from Revenge of the Nerds. The nerds are the poor business owners groveling to TJ and Mandy for some crumbs. Mandy Walsh is Stan Gable laughing at you saps! Kneel gentlemen!!