First Time Was Funny….Now It’s Just Sad

City Council met on November 12th for the second time in their new $1.5 million-dollar Fishbowl. I’d like to tell you that they finally got the fancy $95,000 no-bid Azbell Electronics video recording/archiving/streaming system to work this time, as was promised by recently fired resigned ACM Gary Cox well over a year ago. But, alas, it is not to be. Again.

You can hear the $95,000-quality audio recording here: https://www.lampasas.org/Archive.aspx?AMID=212

What’s the over/under on how many weeks it takes Monica to bite the bullet and call Azbell back out to re-teach her how to operate the Ferrari of A/V Systems? Go ahead, Monica. The $1,000 they charge you for the service won’t show up in the monthly list of “checks written for over $4,000″….so I probably won’t see it.

Or will I?

After all, it’s only been about a year since the system was installed and you were trained on it…and another 2 weeks since the last Council meeting. How could I possibly expect a City IT employee of 14 years to get things figured out THAT fast?

I should probably just “sit here for a minute and realize it was very worth it” to shell out $95,000 for an audio recorder and $8,600 worth of 70″ TV screens. Very, very worth it.

RKJ Construction Kicks deGraffenreid In The Nuts One Last Time For Elevator

RKJ Construction – the company in charge of the overpriced elevator for the Old City Hall project – apparently kicked Finley in his nut sack one last time on their way out the door. Jamming the City for $128,400 on a project initially bid at $119,532.

A quick recap of the elevator debacle:

  • The City sends out the elevator contract for bids WAY back in November 2016. Austin elevator is the lowest bid at $96,605 but our idiot former City councilman “Greasy” Chris Harrison moves to go with RKJ Construction at $119,532 [page 6] to ‘keep it local’.
  • The next time the elevator is mentioned in the minutes, it has somehow morphed to $125,508 [Jan 2018]. I never saw an explanation for this.
  • The Old City Hall renovation is held up for MONTHS because of the elevator.
  • Old City Hall project FINALLY done in November/December 2019
  • RKJ bills City $128,400 for elevator – FAR MORE than originally agreed to.

You’d think RKJ Construction would give the City a small break on price after (1) getting their bid accepted despite it being $30,000 HIGHER than the lowest bid and (2) screwing up so badly and delaying their entire project for months on end. You would be wrong.

In a final act of humiliation for Spinley, the City was billed a grand total of $128,400 for the elevator. A full $8,800 (7.5%) OVER their initial accepted bid of $119,532.

What was even more odd was they broke it into TWO separate checks: LAST month, the City cut a check (#153218 page 41) for RKJ for exactly $100,000 for the elevator. I thought to myself “how nice! They actually gave them a huge break on the price for being so incompetent and holding up the project for months on end”.

WRONG!

THIS month, the city cut ANOTHER check (#153799 on page 51) to RKJ for the elevator in the amount of $28,400.

I realize that being ripped-off for $8,800 is very small potatoes compared to the hundreds of thousands the City wastes annually, but Christ Finley – grow some balls and demand a few concessions from the clowns who couldn’t even get the thing done on time in the first place! You are supposed to pay LESS for incompetent work….not MORE. Absolutely pathetic.

City Council Humor…And Crazy Math

Listening to the audio-only recording of the first City Council meeting in the new Fishbowl provided some laughs…even if I had to sit through 90 minutes of absolute agony to get there.

Link to audio: https://app.box.com/s/k7e9kao553yiyt4vgatpfhvx6igyk9gq

The humor (once again) concerns the horrible deal the City wants to make by moving the police department servers from in-house servers to cloud servers.

If you slide forward to the 1:29:25 mark, you will hear (barely – the audio is terrible – not worth $95,000) the explanation as to why the PD needs to make the move to cloud storage. We are told that “by OUTSOURCING our video to a cloud solution, it’s gonna eliminate some work that Monica and Kristy have to do to maintain, update and repair that server.” [1:31:10 mark]

Yes, we definitely don’t want to burden Monica and Kristy with “maintaining or repairing the servers!” That is only, like, their JOB and stuff. Christ, between TSM Consulting, Watchguard, Tyler Technologies and all the others we pay for IT work, the poor girls will have nothing to do but change printer cartridges and head out for an early lunch! Poor dears.

There’s that word OUTSOURCING again! Something I’ve been calling for all along. EVERY city I contacted that was close to our size in population OUTSOURCES their IT. So I’m all for outsourcing – but you ALSO have to get rid of our overpaid IT Department at the same time. Otherwise it makes no sense.

More ‘crazy math’ comes in when we are told they need about 9TB of storage which will cost $270 per month. Apparently storage cost is 3 cents per gigabyte per month – or 9,000 gigs times 3 cents = $270.

Which SOUNDS cheap. Until you go to NewEgg.com and see that you can BUY a 10TB drive for $200 – or 2 cents per gig.

I’m no computer expert and I’m sure that a PD video server and NewEgg external drives are not completely fungible (look it up, Monica) but my point is made: storage is CHEAP in the year 2019. We can BUY storage for TWO cents per gig and own it forever OR we can RENT storage for THREE cents per gig PER MONTH. That makes zero sense to me.

Zero sense, that is, unless the ultimate aim here is to relieve Kristy and Monica of the ‘burden’ of doing their jobs and securing data. Only then does it make a tiny bit of sense.

Another scary thing I noticed from this audio-only recording was how quickly The Seven Goldfish just unanimously vote for massive new expenditures on stuff like this after a 2-minute presentation. Zero research. Zero deep questions. No tabling it until next meeting so they can check on some claims or do some math or ask about other alternatives. Nope. Somebody asks for a big check, and the Goldfish throw tax dollars at it. Easy as that.

The same thing happened with our useless city recycling program. One dummy at a town hall meeting asked for it – and voila: we have a new $12,000 expenditure for something that does ZERO for the environment. It’s actually quite alarming how easily the Goldfish are duped into writing big checks.

No-Bid $95,000 A/V System Is Just An ‘A’ System….No ‘V’ To Be Seen

I remember back in the heady days of Big Dreams and Profligate Spending…when City council was trying to explain why we needed a ridiculous no-bid $95,000 audio/visual system for their new chambers, with all the bells and whistles.

Assistant City Manager Gary Cox was explaining to The Dispatch:

“The monitors [TV sets Azbell raped them on] in the secondary rooms can be set up to provide audio and video from the main chamber — which would allow people to watch meetings live from the additional rooms if the crowd is too large [HAHAHAHAHA] for all audience members to fit in the main council chamber.”

And also this…..

“Cox said an archive of meeting videos will be available to the public. He added that the City Council could decide to stream live video on the internet so people could follow the proceedings if they cannot attend a meeting in person”.

WOW! Archives AND live-streaming! TOTALLY worth getting bent over for almost $100,000!

So I asked the City yesterday if I could see the video recording of the very first meeting in The Fishbowl on October 28th…seeing as how we paid almost $100,000 for the privilege. Their answer?

There is no video recording!

In fairness, Monica probably forgot how to work the fancy gizmo since they were likely trained on it almost a year ago. They did, however, send me a link to the audio recording. I’m no sound technician, but I’m pretty sure you can record audio-only for a LOT less than $95,000.

Audio link: https://app.box.com/s/k7e9kao553yiyt4vgatpfhvx6igyk9gq

So we don’t have live streaming of video…we don’t even have an ARCHIVE of the video. So I guess Monica couldn’t figure out how to record video after having over 10 months to do so, and all those fancy cameras and video recording devices were for naught. Just another failed Big Dream that cost the taxpayers a small fortune. Well done!

It Sure Looks Like IT Department Incompetence Just Cost The City MORE Money

The latest issue of the Dispatch had another interesting nugget jammed into the end of an unrelated article yesterday. Apparently the police department will be using a cloud-based storage system from now on, instead of using their own servers, which they have been doing up til now. From MY reading of this deal, it makes ZERO financial sense. From the Dispatch article:

 “The council voted unanimously to purchase a cloud-based video storage system for the police department. The police department’s existing video storage server is starting to fail, Montgomery said. He added that if the city bought a new physical server instead of using the cloud-based system, the new server would last only about four years.

The cloud-based system will keep data secure, allow for backups and make video-related work more efficient, Montgomery and Information Technology Director Monica Wright said.

The initial cost of the cloud-based storage system is $7,000. In addition, the per-month storage cost – based on the amount of total data the police department stores now – will be about $270, Montgomery said. Recurring annual costs – including software updates and support — will be $10,620.”

A quick look at the math tells me this is an ATROCIOUS deal, financially. The only possible motivation I can think of for this is that the August 16th ransomware attack made them realize just how incompetent our IT Department is and they are now paying up BIGLY to take this out of Monica’s hands and give it to someone who IS competent. I can gather this by how Montgomery points out the benefits of ‘keeping data secure and having backups‘ – which implies we do NOT currently have those assurances under Monica.

Servers cost about $11,000 and are SUPPOSEDLY good for only four years (this is nonsense, but I’ll run with it). So we divide the $11,000 by 4 years and we get a cost of about $2,750 per year set aside for server purchases. That is the CURRENT arrangement – buy a new $10,725 server every four years.

The NEW (financially retarded) deal is this: the City immediately gets bent over for $7,000 as the ‘initial cost’ (for what??). THEN, the City pays $270 a month ($3,240 per year) for data storage. THEN the City gets bent over AGAIN for $10,620 in recurring costs for support EVERY YEAR!!

So we go from $2,750 per year in the current arrangement to $13,860 PER YEAR with the new arrangement! Oh, and toss in a $7,000 ‘initial cost’ on top of it all!! This ‘new arrangement’ will cost the City almost $120,000 over the next 10 years. THAT is yet another REAL cost of having an incompetent IT Department who cannot be trusted to keep data secure.

This most bizarre part of this decision? The City JUST SPENT $10,725 on a NEW PD SERVER earlier this year – Feb 26th, 2019!!! [page 37].

So if we JUST SPENT $10,725 on a new server, then how is it “starting to fail,” as we are told in the article? It’s brand new. And how does a server “start” to fail? It either works or it doesn’t, right?

No, here’s what I think REALLY happened – and this is my OPINION, not fact. It is the only explanation that makes sense to me:

  • PD purchased that server in Feb for $10,725 just like they have been doing all along.
  • The August 16th ransomware attack happens and the police servers get frozen out (we KNOW this happened).
  • I’m guessing the PD servers were either ruined like the water department servers and City hall servers, or had to be rebuilt/recovered at a huge cost of time and hassle.
  • Somebody with a brain realizes Monica should not be trusted with important stuff like the police servers. When Monica ruins City Hall equipment, it can be swept under the rug by a pliable City Manager…but if police servers get bungled, very bad things can happen. Like gigantic lawsuits.
  • The City is in a pickle because they LITERALLY just purchased a new server 8 months ago. They have to gin up this b.s. about the server ‘starting to fail’
  • The Seven Goldfish cannot be THAT bad at math. I just refuse to believe they are THAT incompetent. I presume they are tacitly making a trade and paying an extra $11,000 every year for eternity in exchange for keeping an incompetent IT staff away from the important stuff.

All of this begs the question YET AGAIN: why do we need these two IT clowns in the first place? Why not just outsource ALL of the IT stuff and chop the city payroll by about $200,000 per year? We already have TSM on the payroll for $20k to $30k per year for general ‘network support‘ ….we have Tyler Technologies on the payroll for $44,000 per year…and now WatchGuard will be in charge of the police department IT for at least another $14,000 per year.

If buying a new server every 4-5 years is such a BAD idea and putting stuff on the cloud is such a GOOD idea, then why have we been buying servers all these years? Why didn’t we make this move 12 years ago? Why NOW? I know my guess: a disastrous ransomware attack in August of this year woke up the City to how clueless our IT Department really is.

Rumors Were True: Gary Cox ‘Resigns’ As Assistant City Manager

Looks like my Oct 10th rumor rumblings were true – Gary Cox ‘resigned’ back on October 1st. I find it very weird that this is just NOW being reported on November 5th – and it is jammed at the end of an article about a butterfly park on page 8 as an afterthought – hidden from view of most people.

When the Number Two guy in City government abruptly resigns to “be closer to his son in the Houston area” (yeah, right), that is what I call “newsworthy” – apparently Spinley doesn’t think so. Nor do The Seven Goldfish, who only discussed this in ‘executive session’ away from the prying eyes of the pesky public (which is also why I never saw this appear in the Council minutes, which I watch like a hawk).

Also telling is the fact that Spinley had none of his usual feel-good b.s. spin like “Gary did a fantastic job and we wish him well” or something like that. Nope -Spinley had no comment at all, which makes me suspect the OTHER part of the rumor (that Cox was shown the door and allowed to ‘resign’ gracefully and that there was quite a bit of yelling involved) was also true.

You’ll recall, Misti Talbert was one of the HUGE proponents of creating this “Assistant City Manager” position a couple years ago. They received over FIFTY resumes – possibly because the pay and benefits were worth about $120,000. I have always maintained the position is not needed and the only reason Spinley needs help is because Spinley wastes a LOT of time on foolish projects like the $1.5 million Fishbowl.

If I may make a suggestion to The Seven Goldfish? How about NOT filling this position at all. After all, now that the Spinley is all done spinning his wheels (see what I did there?) on the Old City Hall $1.5 million Fishbowl Debacle, he should have LOTS more free time to do his REAL job, which is making sure the boring stuff like water and electricity and roads are in working order.

Also, by NOT filling this position, the city will have an extra $120,000 every year to waste on stupid stuff like an overpriced A/V system or a survey on SurveyMonkey.com.

Oh, and Gary? My inbox is always open!

This Is Why Spinley deGraffenreid Makes The Big Bucks

No, not for just managing the city. But for his incredible ability to make every horrible decision look like it was a good one and to also hold two contradictory positions in his head at the same time, while talking out both sides of his mouth. He is truly a marvel. Take today’s Dispatch article about the Fishbowl as a prime example:

At the beginning of the article, Spinley needs to somehow explain why they paid $229,000 for a building they had just sold less than two years earlier for $75,000. The reason? The owner made a ton of awesome improvements like new windows, a new roof and ‘electrical work’. He implies the building is just spectacular and they got a deal on this thing.

By the end of the article, he ALSO needs to explain why the $1.5 million Fishbowl is a year late and WAY over budget. He does so deftly with this quote:

“Throughout the project, some residents voiced concerns about the expense and whether a new council meeting venue is necessary“

Asked about those concerns, and about whether renovation was a better option than constructing a new building, deGraffenried said, “I think the choice of the project was correct. I think that to say we have not learned anything from remodeling an 85-year-old building would be incorrect,” 

See how he slips “an 85-year-old building” into the mix? He is now implying (contrary to the BEGINNING of the article) that this shitty old dilapidated building is to blame for all his woes and delays and cost overruns.

Just to recap for the slow crowd:

  • Beginning of article: building is awesome and a great buy at a 200% markup
  • End of article: this crummy shitbox took a lot of effort to get straightened out.

Seriously. Spinley, you missed your calling. You would be a shoo-in for White House Press Secretary.

Quote Of The Year Winner: Misti Talbert

I just have to record this for later reference down the line. In today’s Dispatch, Mayor Misti Talbert made the following observation about wasting over $1,500,000.00 on a vanity project (new City council chambers and building renovation) she championed from start to finish:

“This has been a lot [of money]… but I think it’s been worth it,” Talbert said. “I think if you sit here for just a minute, you’re going to realize this is very worth it.”

I’m sure for The Seven Goldfish, it is very worth it. They get to sit in their fancy chambers surrounded by toys for about 4 hours a month. For the other 6,993 of us suckers citizens, probably not so much.

Although I guess if I sneaked into every single one of the 2,000 houses in Lampasas, stole $750 from every single one of them, didn’t get caught, then sat in my living room “for just a minute” ogling the $1,500,000.00 pile of loot I will get to enjoy at everyone else’s expense, then I would probably say the same thing.

Seven Goldfish Move Into Their New $1,500,000.00 Fishbowl

Huzzah! The $1,500,000.00 Talbert/deGraffenreid Wow-Factor Vanity Project is supposedly finally done, according to today’s Dispatch!! Only a year late and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars over budget!

I’m not sure why they waited until four days AFTER the Oct 28th City council meeting to trumpet this thing in the newspaper. Why not do your big Dispatch puff piece BEFORE the meeting? That way the highly engaged and intelligent electorate can come and gaze upon the majesty of its many big-screen TVs and its $95,000 no-bid A/V system, right?

Maybe it’s just MOSTLY done and not ALL done. Kinda like the ‘shovel-ready’ corpse repository business park. That would also explain why the Dispatch article says that City officials have announced that “a formal open house and dedication ceremony is planned in December” instead of making the same announcement last week. Gives them another month to actually make it ALL done, right?

I think one of the funniest parts of the article is where Spinley deGraffenreid explains to us morons that selling the entire building to Joe Corcoran in 2013 for $75,000 [which is less than $7 per square foot!] and then BUYING BACK THE EXACT SAME BUILDING IN 2015 FOR $229,000 was ACTUALLY a stroke of genius. BAHAHAHAHA. I gotta hand it to Spinley – I have no idea how he keeps a straight face when he makes these outlandish claims.

The explanation for paying over TRIPLE what they sold it for two years earlier? Well, I guess old Joe made some ‘improvements’ to the place – like new windows and a NEW ROOF, according to the Dispatch article.

New roof??? Weird. Because, as I recall, despite the idiots at JNW Architects collecting a check for declaring the building structurally sound [May 2016] and “in good shape”, City council LATER approved almost FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS TO RE-ROOF back on September 20th, 2018!

Spinley also loves repeating his fairy tale that the renovation was ‘only’ $1.02 million, because that’s how much they handed over to ASJ Construction. He doesn’t count all the other stuff – like the $154,000 they wasted buying back the building…the $54,000 to JNW Architects to make a bunch of mistakes consult…the no-bid $95,000 AV system…the $60,000 fire suppression system..$12,780 for 100 stackable chairs to hold the throngs of City Council attendees…$8,055 for OTHER Council furnishings…$50,000 contingency….random furnishings….the $128,400 elevator…the $45,000 roof repair that was supposedly already done by Corcoran….. and a WHOLE BUNCH of other stuff.

Only in the mind of a government bozo do those costs not count. The REAL number is WELL OVER $1.5 million, my man.

Here is a summary of just a small bit of the stupidity – the roof:

November 2013: City council decides to sell the building to Joe Corcoran for $75,000 or less that $7 per square foot.

In 2015: City council The Seven Goldfish decide to buy the same building back for $229,000 – apparently forgetting (as goldfish are prone to doing) they just sold it for $75,000. They claim the $154,000 wasted is ok because Joe fixed some windows and put on a new roof. Joe triples his money in less than two years. Your tax dollars at work.

May 23, 2016: JNW Architects said the building “is in good condition”

October 2016: Finley hands JNW another $18,000 for “structural analysis and provide documentation” for the building.

September 2018: Finley comes begging to City council for $45,000 to re-roof the building. Council The Seven Goldfish, forgetting (as goldfish are prone to do) that the building was already deemed awesome and structurally sound, agree to fork over the $45,000 with no questions.

This would all be hilarious if it was happening to Chicago or Austin Copperas Cove…but no. Sadly these morons are running OUR city. How many more millions need to be wasted before people wake up?

Tyler Technologies, Incode Software and What REALLY Happened During Ransomware Attack – PART I

The City has been paying Tyler Technologies a tidy sum every year since at least 2014. Tyler provides Incode – which (as far as I can tell) is the software than runs all the utility payments for the city, among other things. Below are the amounts paid to Tyler since 2014 (as far back as I bothered to look – not sure how long they have been under contract):

  • 2014 – $33,939.65
  • 2015 – $35,540.42 (+4.70%)
  • 2016 – $37,984.99 (+6.87%)
  • 2017 – $39,820.80 (+4.83%)
  • 2018 – $41,762.43 (+4.87%)
  • 2019 – $43,816.63 (+4.92%) – this is AFTER Ransomware disaster!!
  • Average over five years: +5.82% per annum
  • 2020 – $45,693.33 (+4.28%)
  • 2021 – $47,463.11 (+3.9%)
  • 2022 – available next month…my guess is it’ll be over $50,000

I am really in the wrong business. Only as a government contractor can you raise your prices by 5.8% like clockwork every year and nobody bats an eye. It’s not like this software runs on gasoline and the price of fuel went up 6%….or there are parts made of silver that wear out and need to be replaced. No, it’s a string of code with no moving parts…they just raise it because they can.

MAYBE they raise it because they have to pay their tech support guys more and more every year. Those people who are on the other end of the line when the sh!t hits the fan and Monica/Kristy calls up in a panic asking them to “remote in” to fix the ransomware disaster they are sitting in the middle of. That must be it, right? I mean, for over $40,000 per year, you MUST get SOME kind of customer service, right??

Not exactly.

I requested internal City Hall emails of Monica, Kristy, Finley and Gary covering the period from Aug 15th through mid-September…during the August 16th ransomware disaster (which I estimate has cost the City roughly $40,000 in new computer equipment). Those emails do NOT paint a pretty picture when it comes to Tyler Technologies. Yet, the City STILL renewed their contract AND got bent over for a 5% increase!! Such amazing negotiators over there at City Hall. No wonder developers are flocking to Lampasas with their candy bags and departing with $100k each!

Up next – copies of internal emails during The Great Ransomware Disaster of August 16th.