The Original Lampasshole

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!!

Delana Toups Three Year Anniversary Of Being Wrong About Business Park

Three years ago today, then-candidate for City council Delana Toups made the following horribly inaccurate statement to The Lampasas Dispatch hoping to justify the millions wasted on this ~~corpse repository~~ ‘business park’ which still sits as an empty weed patch today:

“Ms. Toups said she wants to continue to provide infrastructure to develop the business park — which she said [her opponent ‘Greasy’ Chris] Harrison spoke against publicly. Ms. Toups said through the Lampasas Economic Development Corp.’s hard work, “we are on the verge of seeing large corporations come in [to the business park].” – April 21, 2017

On the ‘verge’? As in Detroit Lions are on the ‘verge’ of winning the Superbowl? Or I am on the ‘verge’ of having ripped, six-pack abs and becoming fluent in Icelandic? That kind of ‘verge’?

I’m not sure that phrase means what she thinks it means. Here is the definition.

My only question: since you were all so wrong about this 3-5 years ago, what makes you think continuing to spend millions will ever be correct? I’m willing to bet another three years will pass and we will STILL be ‘on the verge’ of large corporations entering the ‘business park’.

City Council Special Session Tonight at 5:30pm – ** Updated As We Go!!

I’ll be live updating again. Can’t wait to hear all the details of Mandy’s ‘free LEDC money’ proposal!

5:35pm – Council being fashionably late. A whopping 14 people are waiting on-line to watch. About the same as last live-stream. Good thing you built that $1.5 million vanity project to hold 100 citizens. LOL. Can’t even get more than 14 to watch the easy way. SAD!

Video cuts in at 5:35pm, looks like meeting was already underway – nice job guys! Finley in the middle of a dissertation.

5:40pm – down to 12 people watching on-line. A citizen has called in. Can’t hear shit through the $96,000 A/V system, however. No idea what he’s rambling about. Mike White says they will probably have to pull from reserves this year to balance the budget. I’d say that’s most definitely true.

5:47pm – I will say, it IS nice to hear council argue over a proposal instead of rubber stamping something 7-0, as they usually do. Misti making her case that SHE (and council) shut down the businesses and therefor SHE (and council) have to pay something back. I don’t entirely disagree with that logic, except you should have let things open back up already. Two weeks is one thing. Two months is another. Let the damn businesses OPEN BACK UP, as I’ve argued before.

I love watching Randy Clark frustrate the rest of City council with his million questions. Just saying. He’s probably a nice guy but seems like he doesn’t know where he is most of the time.

5:52pm – this is devolving into quite a mess. Bottom line is you will NEVER make an electric utility payout plan that will make everyone happy. Somebody (probably many somebodies) will get hosed badly. It’s a no-win situation. Holy shit! There are 16 people watching! I’m guessing half are readers here at Lampasshole.com

5:54pm – TJ Monroe is yammering now. She still hasn’t learned how to talk into her $250 microphone, so it is all unintelligible. No great loss – she’s usually wrong on every issue. Up to 18 people watching this circus! Oops – there’s the 7-0 rubber stamp – a unanimous vote to implement some kind of two-tiered utility relief thingy. No idea what the wording is.

6:00pm – discussing waiving credit card fees for people paying their utilities. Very stupid idea. People can still pay other ways – the City incurs the cost from the credit card companies and those will not be waived. City will eat roughly $5,600 a month if they waive these fees. Council getting carried away with the giving spirit (*cough Kuehne cough*). Easy to do when they money isn’t yours! We’re at 22 people watching. Holy shit. Delana Toups arguing the correct side of the CC fee waiver. Hell hath frozen over.

Randy Clark back muddying the water with circular questions once again! BAHAHAHAHAHA. I’d go nuts if I had to sit on council with this guy. You guys REALLY need to turn on comments on YouTube. I think you’d get WAY more people if we could make jokes about all this shit in real-time.

6:07pm – I can’t believe they are wasting this much time on waiving CC fees. They should NOT be waived. If only they spent this much time worrying about $96,000 no-bid A/V systems and $180,000 no-bid bathrooms. CC fee waiver is voted upon…goes down 3-4 as it should. TJ Monroe on the wrong side of that too. Shocker. Kuehne and Randy Clark join her on wrong side…but to be fair, I’m not sure Randy knows what planet he is on.

6:10pm – discussing re-opening the golf course. DO IT!!! Jesus. Van Berry (golf course head honcho) arguing his case. Van and Ricky Roy (from my impression in the minutes over the years) are two of the few City employees with their heads NOT buried in their ass. Love to see a Berry/Roy ticket running for City Mayor and VP for life. Hell yeah. Van has clearly put a ton of thought into this – already figured out the flags, the rakes and water fountains. You City council bozos need to put Van Berry in charge of the entire City.

Aahhhhh shit. Randy Clark in there asking silly questions again. I think I’m going to call him “The Speed Bump” because he completely slows down every discussion.

6:15pm – golf course will reopen (unanimous vote). YAY! Now Finley is talking about telephone poles. Excuse me while I refill my vodka and take a shit. This might be a while. Twenty people watching online.

6:20pm – Holy Christ. Misti discussing changing her “closed forever” order when it comes to the Chinese virus. She is making a TON of sense. She even said “personal responsibility” when it comes to protecting your own health. Good for her. Perhaps I’ve been to hard on her. She is running this meeting like a boss. Finley is falling in line too. Wow. I am fairly shocked. Great job guys!!!!

My YouTube feed has frozen up. Pretty sure Mandy Walsh is supposed to make her case for the $3,000 handouts from the LEDC. Still waiting….

UPDATE Tuesday morning- well, it appears Mandy and her LEDC proposal were jammed into that first couple minutes of the meeting that did not get shown on live-stream. It is on the audio version, which can be found HERE. I’ll cover this in a later post.

Little Guy Screwed – As Usual

Ruth’s Chris Steak House restaurants:

$42.2 million in profits last year

Spent $5.2 million buying its own stock

Pays its CEO $6.1 million per year

It has $86 million in cash reserves

It just received $20 million in taxpayer money from a fund meant to keep “small businesses” afloat.

LEDC Operating In Complete Secrecy

Where to start with the utter lack of transparency on the part of the Lampasas Economic Dunces Club? Let’s look at their track record so far this year. Remember, this is a group that handles HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of dollars annually and has wasted millions on a ‘business park’ boondoggle that has gone nowhere.

LEDC is supposed to meet once a month – on the third Wednesday. Meetings are supposed to be open to the public and minutes are supposed to be TAKEN AND POSTED so the taxpayers (the ones FINANCING these idiots) have a clue what is going on. Here is a list of the minutes for far for the year 2020:

Impressive! Here we are on April 19th – and FOUR meetings should be archived. Instead we have ONE from three months ago. How did this happen?

The February meeting DID take place, but apparently the minutes are off limits. I specifically asked the City secretary for a copy of those minutes and was told “the minutes of the February 19 [meeting] were not on the agenda, so the minutes were not considered and the reason they are not on the website“

So the minutes for the FEBRUARY 19th MEETING will not be posted until May 20th. Lovely.

They didn’t bother having a meeting in March. That is also typical. They usually skip one meeting a year, at the very least.

The April 15th meeting was (as always) held in the $1.5 million Jack Calvert Fishbowl Vanity Project. That is the SAME place City council holds their meetings and live-streams to the citizens. It was not open to the public, but the LEDC couldn’t be bothered to use the $96,000 A/V system there to stream or at LEAST record audio like City council does. Instead, these dummies decided the citizens would have to go through the arduous process of registering to view the meeting on Zoom – a very well-known piece of junk that only a dunce would sign up for.

Incredible: the City ALREADY PAID FOR a $96,000 A/V system to record audio and video of meetings….but the LEDC can’t be bothered with that. Instead they want the taxpayers to dick around with a third-party, piece of crap teleconferencing site. There is absolutely no reason for this. I asked Finley two months ago during our face-to-face why the LEDC doesn’t use the $96,000 A/V system that is sitting right there in the meeting room. He had no answer. He didn’t know.

I was also told point-blank by the City secretary that “there is no recording” of the April meeting. Lovely again! I sure hope somebody at least took some minutes. Otherwise, they might be in violation of their charter.

So, we have ZERO idea what is going on with the LEDC as they prepare to hand out $3,000 checks to random businesses in town to “help them out” of the Chinese virus mess [page 3 agenda].

Luckily, LEDC will be having a meeting with City council on Monday the 20th (tomorrow) and that WILL be live-streamed and recorded. Nice of somebody to let the taxpayers know what is going on. But if you ask me, having Mandy Walsh and other City employees and bureaucrats in charge of handing out tens of thousands of tax dollars to random businesses is a recipe for disaster.

Also: “The LEDC review committee is the sole and final authority in determining eligibility for funding.“[page 5] LOL. Gotta love it. I’m wondering if there will be PUBLIC RECORDS of WHO gets HOW MUCH money. There better damn well be, or this is just a random and arbitrary slush fund run by City bozos and bureaucrats.

I’m also wondering if handing out $3,000 checks to businesses of THEIR arbitrary choosing is even legal. They claim “authority of the EDC under Sec. 505.103, Texas Local Government Code” [page 5]. So, of course I went and looked that up. Here it is:

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

First of all, how is this ‘promotional purposes’? It’s a giveaway, plain and simple. Secondly, if I am not mistaken, the LEDC skims about $300,000 in sales tax revenue per year for their little slush fund – so that would mean a max payout of $30,000 for this little program….or ten whole businesses.

Wonder how they will pick those ten lucky recipients out of hundreds. Will people who were nice to Mandy get first dibs? Maybe someone on the LEDC has a brother-in-law and HE will get first dibs. Who knows. All the more reason to drop this idea and simply disband the entire silly LEDC and let people KEEP WHAT THEY EARN themselves instead of begging City bureaucrats for some crumbs back.