The Goldfish Swim Tonight: 12-12-22 Council Meeting

A weem-a-way, a weem-a-way, a weem-a-way, a weem-a-way

A weem-a-way, a weem-a-way, a weem-a-way, a weem-a-way

In the fish bowl, the pricey fish bowl, the Goldfish swim tonight!

In the fish bowl, the pricey fish bowl, the Goldfish swim tonight!

Oooooh, oooooh eee-ooo-wam-a-way.

Join us on Gab.com – for commentary.

Tonight’s topics include:

(1) Assistant to the City Manager Ryan “Forrest Gump” Ward will expound at length about solar panels.

Actually, I am listening to it right now.

Why is Gump wasting untold manhours during “work” hours making up these Power Points and yammering about things like how big of a system a person might need, or how much money they might save? Why is he wasting council’s time on this shit? Why is he warning City council “these are the things you need to consider if you are looking into a solar system”?

Good question. None of that is Gump’s job.

The person who needs to know all that shit and do their own research is the guy shelling out the money for a solar power system on his house. All that other stuff is between the customer and the solar vendor. Nobody else, and certainly not Gump.

A few months ago, Gump wasted time on similar “instruction” to City council on saving water because we were in a drought. Thank goodness we have Mother Gump to look out for us all and tell us morons how to take care of ourselves.

Mind you, this is a guy who writes like a third grader. Clearly, we should ALL be taking our cues from Mother Gump.

(2) Updates on City projects. Gump is also doing the reporting on City project updates too! Hmmm. Almost like Finley (who is sitting right there) is letting Gump take over more and more responsibility as Finley prepares to retire (?). Perhaps more evidence that my guesses about Finley retiring soon are true.

Gump is now filling us in on the Skate Park. He has let us know that Harrison Construction finished the base pad. Wait. Harrison? Is that like CHRIS Harrison? Chris Harrison the former City council member who sat there earlier in the year and told us that the skyrocketing cost of the skate park was because of “diesel” and I wondered why in the fuck a FORMER council member like Chris Harrison was sitting there involved in this at all and carrying water for council? Oh…now I see why Chris Harrison was trying to explain away the massive cost increase to the skate park as “diesel” – because his company was the one that was going to charge that exploding price.

My my my. This is not unlike the time Chris Harrison whored himself out to S2M2, the developer of Brodie Estates, and got City council to hand his new employer $185,000 for a detention pond.

Now I see. Silly me.

(3) More updates on the Business Pork Project. Coincidentally, I drove into that thing today to see what $2.7 million looks like. Well, we got 15 fire hydrants and about 3/4 of a mile of road. Congratulations! Money well spent.

Say that reminds me: if Finley DOES retire early next year, that will be the THIRD person intimately involved with the Business Pork Project to retire/resign/disappear just MONTHS before the entire 20-year disaster supposedly comes to fruition.

Very odd, indeed.

Finley deGraffenried: – $1.86 Million Over Ten Years With Lampasas.

A brief history of our City Manager:

1989 to 1995: Finley was Executive Branch Director at the YMCA in metro Denver, Colorado. This is the earliest job I could find for him. He was about 26 years old when he started.

1996 through 2007: City Administrator in Bridgeport, Nebraska. It’s a very small town of about 1,400 people. It has shrunk considerably since Finley worked there.

2008 through September, 2012: City Manager, Llano, Texas. Another very small town of about 3,500. Finley managed to finagle a salary of about $90,000 in a town where “males had a median income of about $30,000“. This looks like his first taste of how much cheddar a public bureaucrat could make.

Wow. Think about that! Little tiny Llano back in 2008 was paying this guy almost $90,000!!! Plus bennies, of course. Incredible. Mayor Mike Raegor must be a serious moron.

On to the Lampasas years…..

According to the Dispatch, Finley was hired in September of 2012 at an initial salary of $94,500 and a VERY generous car allowance of $500 per month “in exchange for using his personal vehicle for city business.”

Yearbook photo: Most Likely To Be City Manager...or play the tuba.

That’s $6,000 per year, for those of you who are math-challenged like Misti Talbert.

Very generous indeed. To put that in perspective, the IRS Standard Mileage Rate back then was 55.5 cents per mile. Finley would have to put 900 miles on his car every month doing “City business” for that to make sense.

Driving from one end of Lampasas to the other is MAYBE four miles.

Retirement contributions by the City for Finley were immediately $15,725. That is the “we’ll double-match your contributions” benefit that the City of Lampasas so generously offers. The rest of it (health care, insurance, etc) brought the “total benefits” line up to $31,856 [see page 13]

The entire “City Manager” departmental budget back then (2013/2014) was $143,000 [see page 13]- and that was ALL Finley. No other people were in the department.

Well, within two years, Finley had apparently kissed all the right asses – because for the 2015/2016 budget,his salary skyrocketed 30% to $130,000 [page 16] and the total department cost was now $186,000 – a 24% increase.

These were the profligate Mayor Toups years. Besides throwing massive salary increases at everyone with a pulse, they also wasted a million bucks on the “Business Pork” project running water and electricity over there. Pathetic times, indeed. Some of the usual names sat on council during this time: Talbert, Williamson and Monroe.

A few years later, people like Misti Talbert got a bug up their asses about hiring an ASSISTANT for the City manager. We then had the disastrous Gary Cox experiment – which ended in Gary being fired retiring over a rumored prank involving Goldfish crackers – which may or may not have been inadvertently caused by me.

It becomes harder to tease out exactly what Finley was paid every year from here on out, because the department had TWO people in it (Cox, Rickie Roy, Ryan Ward, etc). The car allowances jumped to $12,000 per year ($6,000 each) and the total salary jumped to $225,000 or so. Department costs exploded to the $387,000 you see today – nearly TRIPLING in ten years.

Only recently did they slash the car allowance 20% to $4,800 each.

Let’s add it all up:

Salary: approximately $130,000 x ten years = $1.3 million. Council was kind enough to secretly bump him up during the pandemic and it now sits at $150,000.

[I’m sure that helps his “average pay” calculation when it comes time to figure out his pension. Just like Sammy Bailey…as I’m pretty sure the later years are weighted more heavily. I’ll have to research that]

Extra pay, incentive pay, overtime pay, longevity pay: [yes, those are all real things – see page 17] = approximately $6,000 x ten years = $60,000

Car allowance: $6,000 x ten years = $60,000

Retirement contributions from City: approximately $17,000 x ten years = $170,000

Insurance (health and other): approximately $16,000 x ten years = $160,000

Throw in a bunch of other shit like free cell phone, travel, etc and my very best guestimate is that Finley will be walking off into the sunset about$1.85 millionbetter off after ten years.

Oh, and there is still the pension to be had…forever.

Not a bad gig for a small town where the average citizen who pays his salary make about $50,000 per year, if they are lucky. A LOT better than if he’d managed a Wal-Mart all this time!

While City Manager In Llano, Finley ALSO Had a Blogger Complaining Loudly That He Was Overpaid!

I can’t believe I never ran across this one before. I’ve been doing research on City Manager Finley deGraffenried’s career as a little going-away present. I came across “LlanoWatch” and whoever writes that blog had some valid complaints as well!

Here is a copy of one page:

Did you know that Llano City Manager Finley DeGraffenried will receive a 15% merit raise?

The 2012 budget had a 3% raise for Llano City Manager Finley Degraffenried but, in a quickly called appraisal meeting a month after the budget passed, Finley claimed he was not paid as well as others in the area

Despite several Council memberspresenting performance issues with Finley, Mayor Reagor pushed through a merit increase of 12%. Now 8 months later, the budget has another 3% merit raisetotaling 15% in one year. Will there be another October appraisal surprise? Besides, is Finley’s$87,550really commensurate with similar size Texas cities with city managers without a college degree (see below)?

The pertinent issue is whether he deserves a 15% MERIT increase. He started at a certain salary that was presumably appropriate for the position and his experience. That was the time to negotiate based on commensurate with others. From that point on, it would be his merit that spurred increases. Did he do anything beyond expectations? For example, did he fix the pool, fix the streets, fix the water supply, fix the golf course, not lose money on anything, fix the city website… Future posts will demonstrate the contrary. So any merit raise, particularly 15%, is undeserved.

San Saba city manager: population 3099 salary $76,095 degree yes.  
Coleman city manager: population 5127 salary $60,008 degree yes.
Mason city manager: population 2134 salary $60,700 degree yes.
Smithville city manager: population 3817 salary $72,477 degree yes.
Haskell city manager: population 3322 salary $73,000 degree yes.
Clifton city manager: population 3442 salary $61,402 degree yes.
Clarksville city manager: population 3285 salary $45,000 degree no.
Olney city manager: population 3285 salary $59,760 degree no, some college, 10 years as City Manager.

Wow. Sounds a LOT like what just happened with our Assistant TO the City Manager Ryan “Forrest Gump” Ward! He was hired on at a certain (extremely high) salary – but then within 6 months was handed a 3% “cost of living” raise and then in October ANOTHER 3%.

You see how this all works? Finley complains he is not paid as much as those in the “surrounding area” – something Ryan Gump Ward ALSO did IMMEDIATELY after being hired here.

What happens next? Well the poor schlubs managing those OTHER cities see that Finley is getting almost $90,000 while THEY are only getting $60,000 or $70,000. So THEY go to THEIR City councils and say “hey, I’m not paid as well as ‘others in the surrounding area'” and then THEIR salaries ratchet up as well!

This goes on and on and back and forth and pretty soon you have the the City manager (and police chief, and the school Superintendent, etc) making a ridiculous six-figure salary (WITH BENNIES!!) in a small town where the average chump of a taxpayer who pays for all this stupidity makes about 1/3 of that.

Finley Retiring Next Year?

I’ve heard birdies chirping for a while now….that City manager Finley “Spinley” deGraffenreid would be retiring next year. I dismissed it at first. Why would a guy with quite average intelligence give up a cushy job that pays $150,000 per year ($12,500 per month) PLUS car allowance PLUS phone allowance PLUS a free $14,000 per year thrown into his retirement account by the taxpayers PLUS ‘free’ healthcare PLUS free life insurance and dental??

But I’ve heard it from four or five different sources now, so I can’t ignore it. Where there is smoke, there is usually fire.

By my calculations, he has been paid WELL OVER a million bucks by Lampasas over the last 10 years. That doesn’t include all the perks or his fat pension he’ll be getting, too. Again – that’s JUST in the last 10 years here in Lampasas.

He’ll be 60 in March – not really THAT old. Plus there is NO way he’d make that kind of money and benefits in the real world. So when he retires, it won’t be to do anything else. It will be “to spend time with the grandkids” – and perhaps dip into that kickback fund built by the likes of Azbell Electronics and others?

HAHAHAHA – just kidding Finley. We know that all those decisions you made to pay three times more than normal were due to incompetence…NOT any kind of kickback scheme….

Sanchez works for ASJ Construction – the ones who made out like bandits on the Old City Hall debacle. So she should know.

But after being wildly overpaid both in Lampasas AND in Llano, Finley must have enough millions stashed away to hang up his cleats and get that very fat public employee pension for the rest of his life. Just like Sammy Bailey.

We’ll be doing a deep dive into how much he has amassed over the years both here and as City manager for Llano.

God help us if he recommends Ryan Ward to take over as the new City manager. I’m about 85% certain that Ward is borderline mentally retarded.

For All You Fools Taking The Vaccine and Boosters…

Please PLEASE – Clayton and Bruce, be SURE to get your boosters this fall. You too, Potato Head and Julie Landrum. You were the ones screaming at everyone to get the jab. You were the ones with the idiotic filters on your social media, like this moron Grady Lucas:

Because LOTS of 11-year-olds have heart attacks……

Those boosters TOTALLY help you! Just watch the video and see…

LEDC Let THIS Prospect Get Away? LOL.

This ought to make Mandy feel better about PhoLicious slipping through her fingers.

As you’ll recall, the LEDC listed “PhoLicious” as one of their one of their “about four” serious prospects for their $7 million Business Pork Project earlier this year.

Then they got pho-cked when PhoLicious left town just days after singing the LEDC praises in the local newspaper….

Oh damn! The Big One got away! Think of all the many high-paying jobs that are now in Houston instead of here in the Business Pork! What a missed opportunity!

Or was it……?

My goodness! Wow. One job at $13 an hour and no bennies! LOL. That could have been OUR one job at $13.00 per hour!!!!

Pretty sure the McDonald’s around here pay more than that. Good luck filling that position in the Big City, where they probably hire “sandwich artists” at Subway for $18/hr to start.

I’m not saying this to shit on Joseph’s head. When you run a small business, your balls get squeezed by everyone and you end up working 80 hour weeks and paying yourself last, if there is anything left over after the vultures have their fill. Meanwhile, clueless assholes like Clayton Tucker, Bruce Haywood and that fat fuck Heath Bishop spend their days on Facebook demanding everyone get $30 an hour on their first day of work, when they have never run so much as a lemonade stand.

I say this to point out how stupid the LEDC is and how their high hopes are going to be dashed over and over again. If/when they ever get anyone into that park, the jobs won’t be any better or high-paying than if they had never built the park and wasted $7 million in the first place.

Remember: that 152 acres has been sitting there EMPTY for TWENTY YEARS!!! Nobody has been paying taxes on it, because the non-profit LEDC owns it. If they had just done NOTHING back in 2002, that land would have either (1) been paying taxes this entire time by the original owners or (2) already been bought and developed by a private company and be up and running.

The 70s Were Awesome

In the 70s, you could have a beer and enjoy some quality bro time with your orangutan. He might even help you drive your rig around while you fistfight for supplemental income.

It all made sense to us at the time.

You’ve got to be durable…real durable. And most ain’t

EVERYONE…friends…producers…directors…BEGGED Eastwood not to make this movie…they were all convinced it would ruin his career. Until Unforgiven THIS was the highest grossing film Eastwood had ever made.

Eco-Strong Turd Floats Back To Surface in Lampasas County Breaking News.

Back again from the depths of the toilet bowl. The Eco-Strong turd that refuses to be flushed!!

It’s ‘better for municipalities’ because they are the only ones dumb enough to pay 5x more than a traditional fence

I have no idea who TJ Wright is. From what I see on-line, he seems like a respected businessman who runs several companies from fencing to pools and other stuff. I don’t know how much of all those are HIS businesses and which are other businesses he just pushes in some kind of reciprocal agreement.

I hope to god he hasn’t put a dime into Eco-Strong because he will likely regret it down the road.

First of all, these fences are priced WILDLY higher than a normal fence. If you ask for a price on Facebook, you will not get an amount posted publicly, because it is outrageous and they know people will shit their pants and never pay that amount.

How outrageous?

Well, a 500-foot fence will cost you about $47,000 if you want it to be six feet tall. That is over $90 PER LINEAR FOOT.

They try to justify this cost by telling us it “lasts a lot longer”. Really? Does it last six times longer? Can you prove that? Are there any of these sitting around that were built ten or twenty years ago that prove this concept?

Or will Mike Cour (the scumbag who runs Eco-Strong) decide to disappear or go bankrupt before your fence turns ten and you need to collect on that warranty?

Eco-Turd uses the same argument to push rubber sidewalks too. But the truth is that there is no evidence at all that the extra cost is made up for by longevity. Just ask some of the cities in California who have been dumb enough to try rubberized sidewalks:

“After years of experiments with different materials and iterations of rubberized sidewalks, the city’s not sure the idea will work. “It has not panned out from a maintenance standpoint as we expected,” says Sylvester Mabry Jr., manager of Street and Fleet Services for the city of Santa Monica. He says the original impetus for investing in rubberized panels was their estimated 7-to-10 year lifespan, which would have calculated out to be cheaper in the long run than the regularly required tear-outs and re-pours of concrete sidewalks.Mabry says many of the rubberized panels lasted just two years, and the city has stopped installing more until they can achieve the desired lifespan.“

You might also want to ask the poor saps who invested in Triton Financial how their associations with Mike Cour turned out.

Clearly TJ has never read here. So for his sake, I’m going to link to some Eco-Strong articles I have written in the past. Feel free to use the search function to find more. Just search for “Eco-Turd” or “Eco-Flex” or “Mike Cour”.

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

Eco-Flex False Press Release – Part II

Eco-Flex Can’t Get Their Stories Straight – PART III

Eco-Flex and Mike Cour – Bonus Part IV

Alan Champagne and Mike Cour Caught Lying Red-Handed – Part I

More Eco-Turd Discrepancies…

Eco-Turd Being Pushed Even Harder By LEDC. I Am About To Blow Them Out Of The Toilet Water…

Has The Eco-Turd Finally Been Buried?

Poor Mike Cour. Trying to push fences that cost 5x more than normal in THIS economy! Good luck with that, buddy.

** UPDATE 12/5 **

Ruh roh. Rolling out the discounts already. So that $46,000 fence is now only $32,000? What a deal! I think I’d stick with the old-fashioned kind for about $10,000. Plus, these things are fugly as hell…

I’m seriously wondering if those are Photoshopped. Reminds me of the scene in Fargo where he buries the briefcase with $920,000 in it and looks both ways down the fence line and it just goes on and on for miles. Nobody would possibly pay $90 a foot for a half mile of this shit.