Another Smoking Gun Found – IT Department Told To Re-Bid Contract in Jan 2017…That Never Happened

Well I have finally found the exact dates for our smoking gun.  It was well-hidden deep in one of Monica’s monthly IT Department reports.  Please turn your attention to City Council packets from January 23, 2017 page 80 and find the following from Monica’s report dated January 4th, 2017

Under “November and December projects” (in other words, this happened the previous month right at the end of 2016) it says:   “Contacted A/V vendor to discuss upcoming A/V project at old city hall/new scope/proposal“

Then under “January projects” it says: “Obtain (3) quotes for old city hall A/V project”

In other words, somebody on City council or at City Hall decided the project wasn’t fancy enough in December of 2016 (“new scope”) and wanted a bunch more bells and whistles for Christmas.  Monica was told to go obtain three NEW quotes…and Broadcast was clearly dumped right here.  That is bad enough.  But it gets worse….

So I went looking for these new quotes in the next few City Council packets.  The next packet, from February 23rd, shows nothing.  There are no monthly reports from the IT Department there nor does Finley mention anything.

The February 27th packet (page 100) shows more of the same – that her “February project” is to “obtain (3) quotes for old city hall A/V project“….as seen below:

There are no quotes in this packet.  Nor are quotes ever mentioned again.  The very next packet from March 13, 2017 starts talking about Azbell as if they have been there all along (pages 89-95 item 7.2)…to wit: “we have been working with Azbell Electronics on a concept and design for this project that will be brought to Council at a later date if Council so desires”

No mention of cost, of course.  That shocker comes much later.

So…somebody at the end of 2016 decided “we want more bells and whistles!  We want more TVs!  We WANT MORE COW BELL!!” and told Monica to get three new quotes.  Monica wrote this on her “to do” list several times.  I doubt she just invented that out of whole cloth.

Then, just as suddenly, Azbell is decided upon and no quotes are gotten.  Almost as if someone changed their mind and said “hey…don’t worry about it…I know a guy at Azbell who will set us up, man!”

If that IS how it went down, that would be very bad for that person.  As we know from before this would be grounds for dismissal, according to the City Personnel Handbook:

2.07 Gifts and Gratuities: A city officer or employee may not accept any gift or free services from contractors, vendors, or other persons that might tend to influence his or her official actions or impair his or her independence or judgement in performance of duties for the city.

2.08 Conflict of Interest: A member of city council, the mayor, or an employee of the city shall neither have financial interests, direct or indirect, in any contract with the city, not be financially interested, directly or indirectly, in the sale to the city of any land, materials, supplies or service.

3.08 Employment of Relatives (Nepotism): Nepotism is the showing of favoritism toward a relative.  The city forbids the practice of nepotism in hiring personnel or awarding contracts.  A person who is related within the second degree by affinity (marriage) or within the third degree by consanguinity (blood, including adopted relatives) to any member of the city council or to the city manager may not be hired.

 

Who Gave The Order to Dump Broadcast Works and Give No-Bid $96,000 Monstrosity to Azbell Instead?

So…I have searched every set of minutes and City Council packets from August 2014 (when Broadcast Works was awarded a $34,000 A/V contract for the new council chambers) all the way up to March 2017 (when Monica Wright appeared in a city council meeting and informed us all that Azbell would be doing the (no bid) work…which ended up being quoted at $84,000 – which quickly became $96,000)…and guess what?

Not a SINGLE mention of Azbell Electronics in all those thousands of pages.  Not one.  No mention in the minutes…the packets…Monica’s monthly IT report (where it lists everything she has been up to, like buying refrigerators)….nowhere at all.  It apparently just happened magically one day.  Everyone just woke up one morning and forgot about Broadcast Works simultaneously, I guess.

That tells me this decision had to happen in one of those “closed-door, executive council sessions” I keep reading about.  Far away from the prying eyes of taxpayers.  There is simply no way Monica would be allowed to make this big of a decision on her own.  It had to come from City Council, the mayor and/or Finley deGraffenreid.  There is no other possibility.

So, the question is….who and why?

 

More Money Spent in 2014 For Fancy Chambers That Still Isn’t Done. TVs, Computers and Refrigerators. So….Where Are They Now?

After awarding a $34,000 A/V contract to Broadcast Works in August of 2014, Monica and the IT Department went on a spending spree….you know, to “use up our funds by year end” and so forth.

First were the 100 stackable chairs, bought from Church Partners for $12,780 (but at least she got three bids and went with the lowest one!).  Who knows where the chairs are now.  Collecting dust somewhere in a rented storage unit?

Then, Monica made several purchases from CDW Government LLC on September 5th, 2014.  Including “Chambers A/V PC and RAM for $975.68” and “TVs for New Chambers $2730.30”

Looks like more “let’s spend our budget by year end so we don’t get less money next year” kind of bullshit to me.  I have requested copies of those receipts so I can see what exactly was bought.  Quick question: since it is over four years later and the project is not even close to finished…where are these TVs and computers?  Sitting in a dusty closet with the 100 stackable chairs?  In Monica’s living room?  Finley’s garage?  Already obsolete??  Just more waste and stupidity from a Department rife with it.

Oh…and Monica also went out and “bought a refrigerator for the new Council Chambers executive session room” that same month.  More pissing away of money!  I can’t find a receipt for that purchase, but there it is listed in Monica’s monthly report (Oct 27, 2014 page 43).  How much was it?  Where is it now?

I seem to remember some poor bastard county official recently being crucified here in town for “stealing” a tiny mini fridge or something.  People went bananas.  Yet here we have the city buying thousands of dollars worth of stuff FOUR YEARS before the “house is built,” so to speak.  Would you buy a bunch of furniture and computers and TVs and a fridge before you even broke ground on your house?  No, you wouldn’t.  Only an idiot or a lunatic does that.  You wait until it’s all done and THEN you furnish it.

Unless you are trying to waste a ton of money and pad your budget, I guess.

Here in April 2015, Broadcast Works apparently still has the bid it was awarded at $33,983…so I will keep working forwards from here to see where it all went wrong.  Stay tuned.

More Damning Evidence Uncovered….IT Department Should Be Very Worried

What happens when it is cold and crappy out all day?  I go sleuthing ever-deeper into the mess that is the Azbell Electronics no-bid $100,000.00 “Ferrari of A/V Systems”” debacle.  And after 5 hours of digging, I found a few more HUGE nuggets….which will be posted later today.

Bottom line is this: in August 2014, Monica got three bids for an A/V system.  I have found all three bids in the August 25, 2014 City Council packet – the winning bid from Broadcast Works is on pages 187 through 200.  The Azbell and Whitlock bid sheets follow that one.

Broadcast Works even drew up a fancy little schematic…just like Azbell:

At some point between that day and March 13, 2017, Broadcast Works was dropped, Azbell was chosen, and the price zoomed from $34,000 (Broadcast Works original bid), past $43,000 (Azbell original bid) to $96,000 (Azbell final price which was NEVER BID). Somewhere in the council packets, the answer must lie.

So I thought of a new angle to pin down these slippery weasels: start by requesting and searching for every actual check that was written by the City during that time period (I have made a records request for copies of all checks).

The City is also required to post all these checks and they show up in the first packet to City Council every month.  I still haven’t found a check written to Broadcast Works but I found a lot of other interesting things – more money wasted and more questions raised.  The noose continues to tighten around the IT Department and some of their highly questionable purchases.  Stay tuned…more to come today.

 

 

Finley’s Folly To Cost Another $16,417…And Take Longer Than Expected

As reported in the Lampasas Dispatch today, Council voted unanimously to ignite another $16,417 in taxpayer funds.  ASJ Construction change order #3 to raise the ceiling 9 feet and repair/replace a bunch of duct work was approved this week.

This sure doesn’t look like a project that will be done “mid December”, does it?  That’s because it isn’t anymore.  The completion date has been pushed back yet again and “City officials now hope the building will be ready for use in early 2019,” according to The Dispatch article.

Nice and vague!  They HOPE the building will be ready in ‘early 2019’.  Gives them a ton of wiggle room – AND lots of time for more change orders!!  Cha-ching!!

City Council Throws ANOTHER $50,000 at Old City Hall Debacle

An additional $50,000 has been added to the Old City Hall debacle project as “contingency for possible expenses related to window treatments, landscaping and ‘additional improvements‘ [BLANK CHECK ALERT!].

Yes….it is a “contingency” amount.  I am willing to bet that not only will the entire $50,000 get spent, but another $15,000 on top of that if/when they decide they need ‘window treatments’ as fancy as the ones in Dallas or Austin.

The City is in receipt of “pay request #3” from the contractor, indicating 54% of project complete (they anticipate mid-December finish…HAHAHAHAHA).  Oh, and “there is some seeping on the walls, but he [who is he?  Doesn’t say] has consulted with the mechanical engineer”

Sounds like another disaster in the making.  Vague proclamations of seeping on the wall while an unknown person is supposedly looking into it.

How big is the pile of money they have set on fire now?  I’m seriously losing track.  Hold on while I peruse my own investigation notes….

…..ok.  Looks like we are getting very close to $1,500,000.00 now.  Between the change orders, the roof suddenly needing to be fixed (which JNW failed to notice when they collected $18,000 from Finley to do a structural analysis), now this $50,000…plus more to come.

Remember back in April of 2015 when city council was fighting over this entire project and $375,000 was set aside?  Then the first estimate came it at $750,000?  And Misti Talbert was all gung-ho for this train wreck anyways??  Saying she “couldn’t make an uninformed decision”?  I sure do.

So we went from $375,000 to $750,000 and now to DOUBLE THAT at $1,500,000.00 and STILL not done.  

I hope that when we fall into a recession (possibly next year) and sales tax receipts plummet and the city is staring a huge deficit in the face (because they will NEVER cut City Hall fat $100k salaries, we know that) and your taxes get raised YET AGAIN….well, I hope everyone remembers who was behind this colossal waste of money.

But hey, at least you can go look at your $100,000 TV sets hanging on the walls of your $1,500,000.00 City Hall for two hours twice a month during council meetings!  Woo hoo!  Money well spent.  Perhaps we should name it the Misti-Talbert-Finley-deGraffenreid-Azbell-Memorial-City-Hall so nobody forgets the great minds behind this project.

City Paying Three Times To Do One IT Job

I’m sure you have all gotten your property tax bills by now!  Happy?  You’ll be REALLY happy when you read yet another chapter of waste in the IT Department!

I just love picking up stacks of records from City Hall.  Love it.  It’s like Christmas in October.  Today, I was handed a nice big pile of copies (for only $151.60) pertaining to IT Department expenses under the heading “Professional Services” [budget line 505-5395].  As I have pointed out recently, in addition to our two highly paid IT ‘experts’, the IT department farms out a lot of work to “professionals” who then do the work that our ‘experts’ are unable or unwilling to do.  One of these “Professional Services” is TSM Consulting….and boy, do they make some easy money!

I was hoping that these copies of the TSM bills would provide SOME KIND of description of what EXACTLY the city is getting for their $1,800 per month.  Nope.  Nearly every single page looks like this:

Just month, after month, after month (for YEARS) of shelling out $1,800 to TSM Consulting…for “monthly network support”.  All initialed and approved by “MW”…seriously??  Her “Network Administrator” is supposed to be doing that stuff – it says so right in her job description:

Of course, neither our IT Director NOR our Network Administrator has a single certification from Cisco or Microsoft.  Most “experts” have their CCENT or CCNA or CCNP certifications.  Not our well-paid experts.  And why should they?  Just sit back and have the suckers taxpayers pay TSM Consulting $1,800 a month instead!  Presto! The city is paying three people to do one job!  And you wonder why your taxes go up every year.  Incredible.  Monica has been there THIRTEEN YEARS and does not posses an entry-level network certification.  Nor does her underling Kristy Acevedo.

Even worse, it appears that TSM Consulting gets paid $1,800 per month just to be on-call in case of a problem.  So they get paid to do nothing most of the time.  How do I know this?  Well, buried away in my pile of Christmas gifts was this – a nice double billing for Feb 29, 2016:

Yes, that’s right – in addition to the ‘normal’ $1,800 in free money paid to TSM in February 2016, it appears there was actually something for them to do.  Namely “remote support setup, network mapping, and internet and firewall troubleshooting” – and for THAT, we paid ANOTHER $2,000 on top of the $1,800 retainer!  Are you kidding me??  It also doesn’t even state how much time they spent on it!  Just “quantity 1” and “rate $2,000”.  Would be nice to see how many hours they actually spent on this.  Incredible!  Nobody knows how to burn money like the IT Department.

Worse yet, TSM isn’t the only one getting paid to do our IT Department’s jobs for them…CivicPlus, Cardinal Tracking and even some dude named Neil Cardwell are all on record as sending bills for IT work to “MW” over the years.  Here’s another one:

Server migration is just moving data from one server to another.  Kind of like I move damning financial photos from my phone to this blog – little did I know that was worth $150 an hour.  MW and her entire IT “department” didn’t know how to move data from one server to another??  Mind-boggling.

So, it appears the job description for IT Director is

  1. Show up to the office…post some Facebook crap on personal page
  2. Find a consultant to do anything harder than change a printer cartridge
  3. Sign “MW” after job is complete (complain during 2-hour lunch that you have hand cramps)
  4. Take three weeks paid vacation.
  5. Drive to Dallas.  Look at their City Council chambers.  Drive home.
  6. Go to a couple of City Council meetings and pick the “monthly website photo contest” winner.  Bat eyelashes at City Council.
  7. Throw away the competitive $34,000 A/V system bid.  Replace with $100,000 A/V system.
  8. Make sure you take all 10 sick days….you earned it.  Kinda.
  9. Collect fat check and year end “appreciation pay” from Finley, as soon as he takes break from setting $1,500,000.00 on fire over at Old City Hall.
  10. Annual get together with Finley, Gary and Kristy…create $500,000 money pile and jump around in it while laughing heartily at suckers taxpayers.
  11. Repeat for a few more years and then collect fat pension

Must be sweet!  Good thing there are thousands of suckers citizens out there paying that property tax bill every November!

We Are Still in Business

In case people are thinking I’ve let go of my bone and wandered off after losing interest….rest assured, I have not.  There are still PLENTY of sketchy dealings to look at and lots of waste to uncover.  I just took a much-needed vacation and have been dealing with 19 inches of rainfall out here in Belton.  Or is it Tyler?  Or maybe Round Rock?  I forget.

I have a big surprise coming for City Hall in the next few weeks.  One that may finally get to the bottom of the $100,000.00 Azbell Electronics scandal.

I also have records requests pending at City Hall, which will give me more rabbit holes to explore.

Finally, I’ll be digging into the Lampasas Economic Development Corp (LEDC) and putting together a summary of  the large amounts of money spent over the years and the near-zero return on those funds.

So…check in every now and then and stay patient!  I have only just begun.

But…But…But…Marble Falls Has One!!!

I have opined previously on how ridiculous it is to try and match Marble Falls when it comes to expenditures [such as Christmas decorations] and paying our government workers [like city managers].  Marble Falls may be close to us in population, but there is about FIVE TIMES as much money sloshing around there.  [I calculate this by noting that Lampasas sales tax revenue is around $120,000 to $150,000 per month whereas Marble Falls gets a check for more like $750,000 to $800,000 per month – that is a HUGE difference].

I think we all know this on a gut level.  After all, they have not only a Wal-Mart but also a Home Depot AND a Lowes!!  Their cup definitely runneth over.

But there is ONE thing we should have tried to copy Marble Falls on and didn’t – and that is their city council chambers.  As you see below, it is quite modest…about 30 chairs, a big TV on one wall and a medium sized room.

What did OUR city do when they got this “city council chambers vanity project” in their heads?  Sent Monica Wright out to view the city council chambers of Dallas, Austin and Round Rock to “look for ideas”.

Yes, I’m serious.  I have that on very good authority.

Dallas and Austin are two of the biggest cities in the entire country and Round Rock is about 20 times bigger than we are.  Yeah – makes total sense we would try and copy them – and spend several days driving around to ogle them!  Maybe that’s where they got the idea to throw away our puny and embarrassing $34,000 A/V system bid and instead blow almost $100,000 on the “Ferrari of A/V systems” in a chamber with SEVEN TV sets.

In your face Marble Falls!

One of Finley’s talking points to justify this huge expenditure is that city council “needed more room”…but I’m wondering why?  When I read every single council minutes for the last 4.5 years, there were rarely more than 20 city employees mentioned as being present.  Call it 25, tops….and THAT was rare.  Usually it’s more like 12 or 15.

So the “twice the size” new chambers and the “100 stackable chairs for $12,800” must be for all those concerned citizens who show up at the meetings every week, right?

Not exactly.

When a certain city council member was yelling at me that “all you do is bitch and moan like everyone else, but you never come to a meeting”

I then said “so not a lot of people come to the meetings, eh?  Like how many show up?  Three?  Five?”

He said…and I quote…”If we’re lucky”.  Having just walked him right into my trap, I asked “if nobody goes, then why do we need this fancy-pants, top-of-the-line, overkill A/V system with $8,600 worth of huge TVs costing almost $100,000.00?”

Bam.  No answer for that one.

If Marble Falls tried to match US and blow a ton of money on a brand new city hall and council chambers, they would have to spend almost $8 million dollars and have 30 TV sets for it to be proportionately ridiculous.  I’m pretty sure the citizens of Marble Falls would grab their pitchforks and torches and toss a few morons off that big bridge of theirs if they pissed away that kind of dough.  And rightfully so.