As Budget Process Starts, Here Are Current Salaries Of “Underpaid” City Employees. They Are Higher Than I Thought.

The only way to know exactly what the top bananas are getting paid by the City is to make an open records request of paystubs and multiply by 26 pay periods. Govsalaries is a good start, but they are usually behind the curve a bit.

I made such a request last week so we can get a baseline going into the current budget talks where Finey has informed us that they need ANOTHER “4% to 5% increase” in salaries for some personnel.

#1 – City Manager Finley DeGraffenreid: current salary $156,000($6,000 every 2-week pay period). This is the guy who got a secret $10,000 bump from $130,000 to $140,000 during the pandemic. That would be the pandemic when many were losing their jobs and had their businesses forcibly closed by the government. Most City employees got to sit home for weeks on end to “flatten the curve” as well. So we are looking at a $26,000 (20%) increase in three short years.

Pretty good pay for a guy who sits in an air-conditioned office most of the time and who oversaw debacles like the Hostess House “facelift,” the Old City Hall “renovation,” the still-empty Business Pork project and the Ransomware Attack of 2019….and who tends to pay double or triple what a job is worth.

Oh, and he now has an assistant to do his bitch work. So 20% more pay and a lot less work to do. No wonder he hasn’t retired yet. He’s getting handed $6,000 every two weeks to stroll around and say shit like “stakeholders” and “leveraging enterprise funds.”

[Fun Fact: Finley has made $1.85 million over last ten years thanks to Lampasas wildly overcompensating him]

#2 – Assistant to the City manager Ryan Ward: current salary $121,000(up 10% since he was hired 18 months ago). Ryan was overpaid the instant he was hired. Finley started him at $110,000, despite the fact that a typical salary for that position is more like $85,000:

Just MONTHS later, Ryan got a COLA – even though he had just agreed to a starting salary 6 months earlier and had no business at all whining about a cost of living bump.

Ward’s main job seems to be coming up with knew and novel ways to cost the City more and more money to make his own job slightly easier. Like the $38,850 he requested (and got) last year to make it easier to calculate requests for time off from OTHER employees. No, I am not making that up.

Ward also thought (after a mere 7 months on the job) that super special government employees like him needed more perks…like $5 rounds of golf and days off for not being a fat slob. No, I’m not making that up either.

Another thing Ward did was to conduct a “salary study” (using towns like Fredericksburg and Marble Falls) to “prove” how underpaid Lampasas City employees are. Ironically, Ryan himself informed us that the position of Lampasas Police Chief was OVERPAID by about 8%!

The City responded by RAISING the police chief’s salary further. Which brings us to….

#3 – Police Chief Jody Cummings: current salary $103,245(UP 4% from the time Ward informed us he was overpaid by 8% last year). Jody was making “only” $81,540 back in 2019 – and has thus seen a 26.6% increase in the last four years….as he was promoted to chief after Sammy Baily retired.

Oh – and the police chief of Burnet, right down the road and the same size as us, makes about $30,000 LESS than Cummings does.

[Is this a good time to let you know that city council just set this year’s property tax rate at the absolute maximum they could get away with without triggering an election? Or that city employee compensation will surpass $10,000,000 in the budget this year for the first time ever? No? Then I’ll keep quiet about that.]

#4 – Economic Development Director Stacey Ybarra: current salary $85,719 Stacey was hired a mere 8 months ago. But somehow she got started at a salary TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS HIGHER than Mandy Walsh was getting – even though Mandy was in that spot for 5 years and had more letters after her name. Shit like this makes me wonder if Finley has been getting kickbacks all these years. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me.

Anyhoo – Stacey’s NUMBER ONE PRIORITY (according to her) is to get that Business Park filled up! As of today, it still sits empty. Now, she has CROWED about a “project” being “won” and she has crowed about “20 to 35 jobs” being created by some secret company – but refuses to divulge the name of the company or anything about it.

From where I’m sitting, that looks like being paid $85,719 to lie your ass off. But what do I know. I’m just a stupid taxpayer, here to be milked by goldbrickers.

Don’t forget all the days off too….

Oh, did I also mention the public pool is now closed way earlier than normal? Yeah, we probably don’t have money for that. We need to hike everyone else’s pay “4% to 5%” so they don’t all starve to death on their six-figure salaries.

LEDC Handing “Economic Development” Director Budget Increases – Because They Reward Mediocrity

What do you do when the head of “economic development” manages to keep the Business Park empty and produce no discernable results for her $85,000 salary (and $32,000 in benefits)?

Why, you give her another $16,000 and a $900 iPad to boot!

Yes, yes – only the BEST and most expensive iPad will do! She is a government employee, goddammit! We must pay top dollar!

I refuse to buy Apple shit so I have no clue what that stuff costs. I know it’s wildly overpriced, but $900 sure sounded like a lot to me. So I looked it up. It is. Plenty of nice ones available for $500…and plenty of “budget” iPads for $250.

But Shaub and Hudson don’t play that. You don’t spend decades on the LEDC wasting millions like those guys by looking for deals.

Did Mandy not leave an iPad behind? What has Ybarra been using for the last 8 months? A ratty old iPad that was, like, 12 months old or something? Gross.

Ybarra also asked to increase the “professional services” and “advertising” budget (presumably for the Business Pork) by over $8,000! Gee, why do they need that?? According to the LEDC, the Governor’s office is sending them PILES of RFI’s (requests for information) every week for free! At least that’s the story they have told us for the last 20 years. Seems weird you need to advertise that much when the governor is sending stuff for free.

[FUN FACT: the LEDC has spent over FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS advertising that piece of shit goat pasture over the last 10 years! With NOTHING to show for it. Just last year, they asked for $15,000 for advertising!]

Furthermore, Ybarra wants another $7,600 for “conferences” and “school.”

Yes, you read that right. She wants to gallivant around to more useless Nerf conferences like the one she went to this year:

Economic Director Stacey Ybarra Attends Nerf Conference – City Pays To Learn Obvious Facts I Have Written About Here For Years (For Free).

AND she wants the City to pay for her schooling so she can get more letters after her name! Pardon my pointing this out, but Mandy Walsh had WAY more letters after HER name and she was paid LESS than Ybarra is getting in her first year on the job! How the hell does that work?

You know what happens after that? Ybarra likely uses those extra letters after her name (which Lampasas paid for) to shop herself around to other cities for an even HIGHER paying job. You watch and see. You heard it here first.

If LEDC president Lampasshole were in charge, all of these requests would be denied and the LEDC disbanded.

Lampasas School District Faces Massive $4.3 MILLION Deficit

Jesus Christ. You have to wonder sometimes: where the hell does it all go??

The CARES Act gave $30 billion to schools. The COVID Supplemental gave them ANOTHER $81 billion. The American Rescue Plan Act gave ANOTHER $170 BILLION. So that’s $280 billion – or over a quarter of a TRILLION dollars.

The State of Texas just threw untold billions more at the schools.

You have Lometa going to 4-day weeks, even though they had enough money to blow $1.9 MILLION on a new track.

The LISD expenditures for this school year are going to be $43.866 million dollars. Just two years ago, it was $35.7 million – that’s a 23% increase in just TWO YEARS.

They had plenty of money a year or two ago – so much that they wasted SIXTY-SEVEN THOUSAND on an intercom system for a single school.

How hard did they shop THAT one around? I’m guessing “not very.”

And the school board has the nerve to actually tell us they need a new football scoreboard for $200,000!!! Are you out of your minds?

I wonder how many of the current students are here illegally. Are we even allowed to ask? Don’t worry though. Bruce Haywood and Clayton Tucker (neither of who pays a dime in property taxes) says a wall at the border is “racist” and we should let everyone in who jumps the fence.

Plus, somebody has to pay “Doctor” Chane Rascoe’s $177,000 salary (plus benefits!)

More Sad Milestones Hit By LEDC and Failed Business Park

It’s hard to believe it has been TWO WHOLE YEARS since Misti Talbert was installed as president of the LEDC.

Inbred LEDC Decides To Inbreed Some More – Talbert Takes The Wheel

It has been 18 months since Talbert and the LEDC stood before City council and begged for another $2 million to incinerate at the “Business Park” – and swiped $971,000 in Covid relief funds from the City. Money that COULD have been used for just about anything. Instead, the LEDC grabbed it and set it on fire….

Talbert and LEDC Pilfer $971,000 MORE From City Coffers For Business Park Debacle.

Guess what? The Business Park is STILL EMPTY today on August 14th, 2023! And despite the LEDC posting about a “project won” and “20 to 35 jobs created,” when pressed for evidence of this, they had to admit: we don’t have any.

Of course, the biggest piece of evidence of all is the giant 156-acre “goat pasture” (former council member Mike White’s words, not mine) sitting out there on highway 183 as you head south towards Cedar Park. A $7 million dollar testimony to idiocy, money wasting, incompetence and general retardation.

“Shovel ready” for EIGHT YEARS. Still empty.

Why, it is already EIGHT MONTHS since Ryan Ward and Stacey Ybarra went on the radio and told us the following:

Ryan Ward: “That’s a great question! I can give you an update on that! Mandy did a great job…it is about 99% complete…the legwork that Mandy had done…there are several businesses that were waiting on the City of Lampasas to complete that… so once the electric is complete, we hope to get folks, uh, moving in as soon as possible, you know, some of these businesses that are really interested in being out there”

Yet here we sit ANOTHER eight months later. Nothing accomplished. What happened to the “several businesses” waiting in the wings? You’ll never get an answer on that, because the City’s hack attorney refuses to divulge it. It’s all “secret.”

The Lampasas Economic Development Corporation: throwing tax money into a pit for 21 years and counting!

How the Business Pork Project Started 21 Years Ago (Spoiler: They Lied From The Start)

Business Pork Project – REAL Phase I Was in 2003

Didya Know? Business Park Edition (2005)

‘Business Park’ Is Huge Piece of Pork. Pope Eckermann and Others Feasting On Taxpayer Ass

OUTRAGEOUS Tidbits From LEDC Non-Profit Filings

Did Lampasas Build A Biz Park In The 1970s??

Look How Much Money the LEDC Has Squandered Over The Last Six Years

The Lie That Keeps On Giving

Shovel Ready – Another Lie

Weed Patch Blasts From The Past

Mandy Walsh Begs Ajinomoto To Back ‘Business Park’. Ajinomoto Offered City 200 New Jobs AND $300,000 Back In 2016. City Declined!!

Somebody Has Some ‘Splaining To Do Regarding Eco-Strong, Mike Cour and the ‘Business’ Park Money Pit

Has The Eco-Turd Finally Been Buried?

LEDC Kinda/Sorta Grilled By Council – A Rarity. Mandy Clause Flustered – Part I

*UPDATE* – LEDC Loan Costs Now Much Higher For Taxpayer Thanks To Idiotic Extension Of Original Loan

Reviewing Business Pork Project Prospective Tenants

Council Meeting 2-14-22: Talbert and LEDC Pilfer $971,000 MORE From City Coffers For Business Park Debacle.

Lampasas Democratic Party Chairman Web Of Lies. The Definitive Timeline Of A Fraud. Part II.

So, we got a good look at the CURRENT resume in Part I. This is the resume that shows he is finally abandoning the Fake Rancher Persona, at least as far as his on-line persona goes.

Oh, he’ll still wear a cowboy hat and play “rancher” for the little old ladies with the goat pictures, but he knows he’s been busted – and he needs to move on to the Global Warming Grift full time.

Here is the definitive timeline of how we got here – all of Clayton Tucker SDEC-24 TX lies strung together in one spot for posterity. When he decides to run for something again, I will hand ALL of this over to his opponent on a silver platter.

Graduates college in 2013, dicks around doing nothing for a year and then babysits kindergarteners for 9 months in China in 2014/2015. Quits that after blathering about how great China is and how the healthcare is SO cheap, etc, etc. But shockingly, decides to leave.

Dicks around “traveling the world” in Asia on someone else’s dime until he resurfaces in Lampasas in 2016. Dicks around another year until summer of 2017 doing nothing. He is now 26 and must be kicked off mom and dad’s health insurance by law.

His parents are probably now saying “hey asshole, we spent $80,000 for your useless International Relations degree…get to work – you graduated FOUR years ago!” so he starts some shitty blog called Organic Helicopter in the summer of 2017. It goes bust almost immediately. He also tries to grab a vacant Lampasas City council seat at this time – and fails.

Shit! What to do now? This is when he starts glomming onto loser campaigns like Chris Perri (loses in primary to Julie Oliver) and Julie Oliver (loses in general to Roger Williams). Gets a taste of grifter life from idiots like Julie Oliver and Robert O’Rourke. Also, Clayton’s mom used to be a government employee with the Railroad Commission and I’m pretty sure a relative got him an internship in Williamson County/County Attorney’s office during the summer of 2011. So he decides to go the “parasite” route with his life.

Maybe thinks he can work his way up the grifter totem pole working for free for loser grifters like Julie Oliver. In 2018 grabs a position (I hesitate to call it a job as I don’t think he got paid) with the Bernie Sanders scumbags “Our Revolution” – and pals around with Bernie Bros during this time:

Still hasn’t adopted “iconic” cowboy hat and fake rancher persona
Still no cowboy hat…just trust fund nerd baseball cap

[He becomes butt buddies with Jim Hightower at this point who he seems to worship. They have a lot in common: both commie nerds who pose as farmers but have ZERO practical agricultural experience]

Decides to run for office HIMSELF towards the end of 2019. I’m guessing he saw how unintelligent and unskilled all these other grifters were and thought “hey, I’m just as dumb and useless as them. Why can’t I run for office too?”

He was briefly a candidate for Texas House District 54 as of September 2019, but pussied out and withdrew, for reasons unknown. Possibly because he didn’t live there. When he switched to TX Senate-24, he listed a Killeen address. Considering he lives with his mom in Lampasas, that is likely another lie. I once tried to track down his candidate filing papers for that race, but they had been lost or destroyed, apparently….

He bitches online (November 2019) about “losing his health insurance” because he’s “decided to run for office,” like he is making the supreme sacrifice –this is a massive lie. One of the first Big Lies I caught him in. According to HIM (all three resumes), he was “working” for the Bernie Sanders communists at Our Revolution at this time – he was even a “State Director“!!

So the Bernie Sanders political organization that demands health care for ALL did not even provide health insurance to their own employees??? Hilarious! But they didn’t deny him insurance because he was running for office. That’s a lie. A convenient lie for Tucker to segue into how healthcare is a “human right” and we need socialized medicine – one of his favorite demands.

Fun fact: Our Revolution Texas appears to now be defunct. Score one for our side.

The first of many, many lies. But he never thought anyone would put all this together, I’m sure.

That gay-ass photo of him on grampa’s tractor wearing sunglasses and a hat my 83-year-old mom would wear is where he likely launched his Fake Rancher Persona for his campaign against Dawn Buckingham. He yukked it up more and more in every newspaper interview he did, laying on the country boy bullshit thicker and thicker each time. He made up bullshit about “the family farm” that would never be checked by anyone. Or so he thought…

Clear the field for crops. BAHAHAHAHA. What crops???

….and by the end of the year, he had left a huge trail of lies and bullshit about being a farmer/cowboy/rancher – thinking he’d never get caught for it. He was EXTRMELY careless about interchanging those terms, too. A real farmer wouldn’t call himself a cowboy or a rancher….and vice versa. But we are not dealing with a genius here…and he never thought this would all catch up to him eventually.

Covid hit in March 2020 and it worked out nicely for him. He had no real job and was running for office – so he could afford to scream about “stay home, save lives!” because he already stayed home (just like Fitzharris, Haywood, Melissa Johnson and the rest of the losers who yelled at us to do the same).

So he spent countless hours doing retarded videos called “Tucker Talks” – this is where he switched hats and started REALLY going hard with the “cowboy/rancher” bullshit. I covered this fraud in a blog post:

He Wants To Be A Cowboy Baby

[Spring of 2020 he glommed onto his first non-profit with some hard-core lefty hippies (Kristin R. Wright & Kelly Flading) in Killeen called Killeen Creators. He did a bunch of photo ops with masks on and lists it on his resumes – but he never does any work in those gardens or gets his hands dirty. The main driving force was Flading, who died in 2021 and was a TRUE hippie farmer – not a poseur. Now it is mostly a bunch of fat hippies who sit around doing art and creating safe spaces]

Like most women, he was EXTRMELY petrified of Covid and wore a mask everywhere. He chided his opponent Dawn Buckingham (who is a REAL doctor and accomplished surgeon) for being smart enough to realize a mask is useless against Covid.

The guy who can’t get his own life together and lives with mom is going to “protect the health of everyone” – yeah right!
Stupid asshole wearing a useless mask touting socialized medicine. That says it all.

After getting utterly destroyed by 40 points by Dawn Buckingham in the fall of 2020, he was back to being a nobody. He sure didn’t like that. He had gotten a taste for the attention with newspaper and radio interviews as well as his blathering on “Tucker Talks” videos. He got to sit there and act like he knows what he’s talking about (i.e. wind power) even though he clearly does not.

[At this point, every single campaign he touched had turned to shit: Chris Perri, Julie Oliver and his own (twice) with House 54 and Senate 24. He needed to aim smaller and get an easy win, right?]

So of course, he decided to run for Lampasas city council in February of 2021. This is when he appeared on my radar. He also ONCE AGAIN seemed to forget he was a rancher when he filed to run against Zac Morris – and listed his occupation as “political organizer.” May as well just put “loser deadbeat” with that title.

But hey, he got the address correct this time: mom’s house on Western Ave. Not some fake Killeen bullshit address.

Now he laid the “rancher” bullshit on thick again. He tried some “good-old-boy” connections to paint himself as a long-time local. In reality, he only moved to Lampasas around 2016. Hell, I’VE lived here longer than him!!

Bob and Ree (Rosalee) Wright are his grandparents on his mother’s side. THEY are the ones who own the “ranch” where Comrade Clayton goes to pretend at being a rancher – out on CR 2001.

In just 20 months, he had transformed from Bernie Bro, baseball-cap wearing, tuba-playing nerd to a good old boy in a cowboy hat and ranch wear who was a “salt of the earth” rancher! Amazing!

I bashed the shit out of this clown for three months straight – and exposed him as a fraud. He was subsequently dismantled by Zac Morris – losing almost as badly as he had to Dawn Buckingham:

Now he’s a four-time loser. Ouch.

Clearly, being elected to real office in rural Texas is never going to happen. To be elected, you need two of three things: (1) looks and connections (Gavin Newsom, Justin Trudeau) (2) a shit ton of money (Perot, Trump, Bloomberg) and (3) be a very charming/smooth talking bullshit artist (Clinton, Obama).

Clayton possesses NONE of these. So he’s fucked. On top of it all, he’s a midget. That’s four strikes and you’re out.

He can’t move to Austin with the other commies because his parents don’t own a house there for him to live in. What to do next with his failed life?

We’ll see in Part III of The Clayton Tucker Fraud.

Chairman of Lampasas Democratic Party Clayton Tucker Tacitly Admits He Is NOT a Rancher. Makes Sneaky Changes To Profiles and Resume – Part I

Another scalp for my collection. I offer up these collections of facts for any future electoral opponents this socialist may go up against.

I guess now that he is moving on to the “big leagues” with things like trips to Seattle to get in on the Global Warming Grift (and the creation of a new Texas Bluebonnet PAC to take advantage of the grift), Clayton Tucker SDEC-24 (and Chairman of the Lampasas Democrats) needed to cover his past lies like a cat burying his turds.

Like the fact he has been lying about being a farmer, a cowboy and a rancher for many years now. If I were a member of the Lampasas Democratic Party, and this serial liar was my chairman, I’d be pretty embarrassed, indeed.

First, he has changed his headlines from “Rancher” to “Ranching and Politics” – which might not sound like a big deal to someone who is not a weasel and a scumbag. But it is a big change: RANCHER is a noun. As in “I am a rancher!” – but now we have a verb up there…RANCHING. Which is nice and vague.

Here is how he posed for the last few years – as a “rancher” and a “cowboy”:

Here is the NEW headline:

Note that the lie about being a “water researcher” has been removed as well. As have the stupid pronouns.

This is because “rancher” sounds like a real job you can actually be pinned down on with easily-obtained evidence. You’d need to own land (public records) and be listed as a company owner somewhere (public records) and show revenue and stuff – you’d leave a trail of livestock sales somewhere on-line. It’s VERY easy to prove that Comrade Clayton does none of this – and I have done so repeatedly.

When he created his fake-rancher persona a few years ago, he never figured any dipshit liberals or Austin commies would question it. And he was right. But then along comes Lampasshole and blows it all up for him.

NOW, he’s just a “rural dude” who has a minor interest in, like, “ranchin and politickin” and stuff. You know – he heads over to Grandpa Bob’s land and sometimes mows the lawn a little bit or takes a picture with a goat. Nothing too serious, dude! Just a rural dude, kickin it! What? I never said I was a “RANCHER” – no, no…you must have misunderstood. I just live out in an area where there is a lot of “ranching” going on and I mingle with those people a bit. My grandpa owned some cows and stuff. Some “ranching” may have occurred on this land 40 years ago. Who knows? Nothing too serious. I clearly don’t make a living off of it.

See the difference? Subtle but very important to his future grifts. I have permanently marked him a liar all over the Internet and he needs that to go away somehow. He’ll stick with this “ranching and politics” crap for the next few years and hope the rest fades away. It’s about as subtle as his ridiculously transparent “hat trick” he used to do a few years ago:

He Wants To Be A Cowboy Baby

Secondly and thirdly: he changed his resume dramatically and removed all mention of being a rancher. He also changed his LinkdIn page to “Clayton T.” instead of “Clayton Tucker” like it used to be. Now why would you do that, Comrade? Did you think you’d be harder to find and link back to your past lies? Fat chance….

Let’s look at his NEW resume as of today 8/13/23, which makes zero mention of being a rancher….like his old one did.

So – as of this moment, ZERO mention of being a rancher ANYWHERE on his ridiculously long (yet short-on-real-accomplishments) resume. It is simply not there. He is clearly trying to distance himself from his lies now. If you were a REAL rancher running a REAL ranch and were a FIFTH-GENERATION RANCHER as he has claimed repeatedly, you’d think that might be the meat (pun intended) of your resume. You’d be wrong.

But for a while there, he DID stick “rancher” into his resume, in a very lame attempt to cover previous lies back in June of last year:

The problem is, there is no “RX Ranch” listed anywhere as a going concern in the state of Texas – except for one in Ballinger run by a Sally Buxkemper….not a Tucker in Lampasas.

Let’s look at the very FIRST resume he had up in March of 2021 as he ran for City council and listed his occupation as “political organizer” for a communist organization.

Again – no mention of rancher.

He also made a typically huge blunder in 2018 by AGAIN forgetting to mention he was a rancher in a book blurb:

Oooooh! World Traveler! I’m guessing a relative died and paid for that junket. Or mom did. See, he arrived in Lampasas around 2016 according to the Dispatch article written when he tried to slip into a vacant council seat in 2017.

He worked as “Statewide Coordinator for Our Revolution” starting in 2018, according to multiple resumes…so this blurb with the pachyderm HAD to be written in 2018 or 2019….which is the SAME time he claims to have been a rancher in Fake Resume #2. Yet makes no mention of it in the book blurb either! How very odd.

Part II coming next: a definitive timeline of Clayton Tucker’s lies about his Fake Rancher Persona. I’m creating this as a gift to any future opponent Clayton Tucker has when he runs for any position at all.

No, The Skate Park Was NOT Built With “Private Funding” You Dunce

Well, with the annoying heat and drought, it was only a matter of time before the idea of a splash pad came up again.

Some locals were asking about it on Facebook this week. This topic came up about a year and a half ago as well:

I wrote about it at the time – where I pointed out that with the $971,000 that Misti Talbert pilfered from the City Covid gift, we could have built TWENTY splash pads. Alas, her idiotic Business Park STILL sits there…as empty as her skull:

I Think Misti Talbert Hates Children

But this week it came up yet again. Local dunce Jennifer Sanchez (Morono) was available to jump in and spout nonsense that was 100% wrong – as usual.

Oh, and she’s also whining about a big shade cloth again:

Umm, no sugar. The skate park was NOT “fundraised” with “private funding” – that was the nonsense they told us to get the ball rolling. In the end, Wings of Eagles raised about $5,000, maybe. The City paid close to $400,000 – so the “fundraising” part of it was about 1% of the total bill.

Hostess House now $2.15 million, btw – 62% increase.

Parks and Rec SHOULD ignore you. There is no way in hell the City is going to shell out ANOTHER $150,000 or so because you are too lazy to put on a hat or wear sunscreen. HEB won’t either. Money doesn’t grow on trees, dear. I know libtards like yourself THINK it does. But that is a falsehood.

Despite Greentards’ Best Efforts To Wreck Grid With Pinwheels and Electric Fagmobiles, It Is Still Going Strong.

“Fix the damn grid! Fix the damn grid!”

Such is the call of the retarded socialist myna bird who lives with his mom.

Wrong. There were no outages last winter and there are none now. That is DESPITE WAY too many liberals moving to Texas and plugging in their Tesla Fagmobiles. The grid is still kicking ass. I have my AC cranked up full blast right now.

Where is the socialist douchebag right now? Is he admitting he was completely wrong? No. Probably sitting in mom’s upstairs bedroom with the thermostat set at 68, jacking off to Bernie Sanders Tweets.

Health Insurance Premiums For City Employees Benefits To Jump 13%.

A yes….the “benefits” part of “salaries and benefits” that Ryan and Finley constantly ignore when begging for salary raises of 5% every year and crying poor.

Finley deGraffenreid: “Hey, we HAVE to give these poor people a 5% raise to keep up with inflation!”

Also Finley: “What’s that? They are ALREADY avoiding a huge dose of 13% inflation in health insurance (a major cost for most people in the real world) because they are covered by the City? Yeah, I don’t count that.”

According to City Finance Director Moreno:

“The City has received its annual renewal rates from Scott & White Health Plan for FY 2023/2024. The proposed rate is 13% higher than the current rate.”

Hey wait! the democrats commies keep telling me the inflation rate is only 3%! Which is very weird because the bastards at Progressive just hiked my auto rate this week by 21% despite ZERO accidents ever and no tickets in over 25 years!

Just to give you a sample of some of the new and old rates taken from Moreno’s numbers (page 9):

Old rates for 2022/2023: employee insurance costs $1,348.69 [City pays $969.61 and employee pays $398.88]

New rates for 2023/2024: employee insurance costs $1,548.58 [City pays $1,110.32 and employee pays $438.26]

You’ll notice from the numbers given, that the “employee” portion only goes up 10% while the “CITY” portion goes up 14.6%. The entire rate jumps $200 a month but the City (meaning YOU, the taxpayer) covers $160 of that increase while the employee only covers $40.

Very cool deal to only pay $438 a month for insurance worth $1,548 a month. That benefit is worth $13,320 to the employee – and they probably don’t even realize or appreciate it.

But remember: this is to be IGNORED during discussions about City employee compensation over the next few weeks.

I wonder if the City ever shops around for better rates – or if it’s like the garbage contract: just keep it because they are too lazy to do the legwork of comparing other providers. Shopping around for better rates on everything sounds like the perfect job for an assistant City Manager being paid $116,000 per year.

Also, maybe you should all refresh your memories on the very generous PTO policies of the City – very generous indeed:

City Personnel Policy Changes: Mo Money…Lotsa Paid Time Off.

P.S. Employees also get Vision and Dental. The Dental premiums will go up 5% and vision unchanged.

P.P.S. – Employees also get a 2-1 match on retirement contributions. If Finley/Ryan/Stacey/Monica etc contributes $7,000, the City then chips in $14,000 from the taxpayer. That way, $7,000 becomes $21,000. But that pension is received in the future – so THAT benefit doesn’t really count either, right?

Comrade Clayton Tucker’s Big Time Climate Grift – Part II

So who else signed the Big Important Climate Letter?

Well, one name rang a bell with me as I was reading through….

Grassroot Nation….Grassroots Nation. Where have I heard that name before??

Oh yeah! It’s one of Comrade Clayton’s many shell companies located at 208 S Western Ave in Lampasas – his mom’s house.

Grassroots Nation has NOTHING to do with the environment. It’s just Comrade Clayton’s LLC he uses for the “business” of doing social media for other clients – clients like Red Thunder (his dad’s truck he rents out for pictures), Pontiac Plus (his dad’s car parts store – you know, his dad the 4th generation rancher), Clayton Tucker SDEC (he hired himself to run for SDEC-24 TX – an unpaid position), Lampasas Democrats (of which Clayton is Chairman – he hired himself for $0.00 AGAIN), Texas Progressive Caucus (ANOTHER of Clayton’s non-profits, consisting only of himself) where he hired himself AGAIN.

Speaking of Texas Progressive Caucus and Lampasas Democrats, they ALSO appear as two of the 234 signers….

And what else do we see up there??? The TEXAS BLUEBONNET PAC!

I stumbled across the Bluebonnet PAC last week and wondered what in the hell he was up to. It was just formed 3 months ago and has no on-line presence or purpose. But there they are! One of the 234 signers of the letter for “climate action” – posing as an “environmental group” that actually knows anything about anything.

So, with one stroke of the pen, grifter Clayton Tucker signed for: Lampasas Democrats (who likely have no idea they signed it), Grassroots Nation (his LLC that has zero to do with the environment), Texas Progressive Caucus (a group where he is the SOLE member of the organization) and the Texas Bluebonnet PAC – which was conjured out of thin air just 100 days ago.

Talk about a convoluted, inbred, circle jerk to make yourself look like you matter. Jesus Christ.

If this kid spent HALF as much time working a real job and learning a real skill as he did grifting and forming bullshit non-profits in order to grift more, he could easily afford his own place and move out of mom’s house.

Alas, he’s a grifter. That means that even mom gets ripped off with his scams.