The Original Lampasshole

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

Show up to the office…post some Facebook crap on personal page
Find a consultant to do anything harder than change a printer cartridge
Sign “MW” after job is complete (complain during 2-hour lunch that you have hand cramps)
Take three weeks paid vacation.
Drive to Dallas. Look at their City Council chambers. Drive home.
Go to a couple of City Council meetings and pick the “monthly website photo contest” winner. Bat eyelashes at City Council.
Throw away the competitive $34,000 A/V system bid. Replace with $100,000 A/V system.
Make sure you take all 10 sick days….you earned it. Kinda.
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.
Annual get together with Finley, Gary and Kristy…create $500,000 money pile and jump around in it while laughing heartily at ~~suckers~~ taxpayers.
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.

New Fiscal Year Begins – Finley and Crew Get a Big Raise!

The new budget was finally posted…and the higher-ups at City Hall got an early Christmas present! Salary and benefits for City Manager Finley deGraffenreid and his assistant jumped almost 9% over last year. That line item went from $296,000 per year up to $322,000 per year – totaling over $300,000 for the first time ever. [For comparison, 10 years ago it cost $124,000 to “manage the city”. So it appears to go up 10% a year without fail] There were 54 resumes submitted for that Assistant City Manager job when it was created last year….now we know why!

The IT Department jumped a smaller amount…but don’t worry, they aren’t going to go hungry. IT Director and her one-woman “department”, consisting of Kristy Acevedo, are making a combined $180,881 in salary and benefits this year. You’d be hard-pressed to make that kind of money in the private sector with zero Cicsco or Microsoft real-world training certificates to your names. But this ain’t the real world, baby!

Add it all up, and those four people ALONE are costing the taxpayers over $500,000 every year. Cha-ching!! That’s the kind of money that buys the brains and wisdom to spend almost $100,000.00 on an A/V system that REALLY only costs $34,000!

The weird thing is that even with two highly-paid computer “experts”, the IT Department STILL hires outside companies to do consulting work and “IT support”, at even more expense to the city.

That’s right – TSM Consulting is paid $1,800 a month ($21,600 per year) for “IT support and includes on-site visits as well as remote management” for the City of Lampasas [City Council minutes Feb 22, 2016]. Isn’t that odd? I would think that our two experts could handle basic IT stuff…but apparently not.

Sounds to me like just paying TSM $21,600 a year [line item 505-5395] and getting rid of one of our IT “experts” would save a TON of money. But what do I know? I’ve never been paid gobs of money to “manage” or “direct” city government…I just use common sense.

Finley Pees on Taxpayer Heads – Tells Lampasas Dispatch it is a Refreshing, Much-Needed Rain

I guess Finley finally had to respond to the well-documented instances of Old City Hall cost overruns, waste and no-bid A/V contracts presented here in meticulous detail and using City Council’s own minutes. He did so in today’s Lampasas Dispatch (Sept 25, 2018). This was smart of Finley – the end of the fiscal year is in a few days, and the new budget will be presented soon…no doubt with large spending increases. Best explain how all these millions are actually for the community and not for City Hall employees.

Of course, I have to rebut his rebuttal with some facts that were ignored or left out:

First claim: The “approximately $1 million the city is spending to remodel”

Response: It’s actually $1.4 million and counting [using information from City Council minutes and detailed on this blog]. While $400,000 might not be a lot to those in the upper echelons of city government who are pulling down well over $100,000 per year in salary and benefits, it certainly IS a lot to the average Lampasas taxpayer who makes around $29,000 per year and who is footing the bill for this debacle. It is also 40% more than you state in the article…and they aren’t done yet. Expect more money to be spent.

Second claim: Finley uses the words “Buy Board” constantly like some sort of magic immunity phrase. He claims they went with Azbell and didn’t bid the project for several reasons…one is the magic Buy Board [we don’t have to because they are pre-approved…nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!] and the other is supposedly because “if the city didn’t use the Buy Board method, they would have had to spend an additional $10,000 to obtain a professional design for the system,” according to the article.

Response: I give you one date – August 25, 2014. You DID go out and get three bids. The lowest was Broadcast Works at $33,983. Azbell came in at $41,184 (still a far cry from the $94,683 Azbell is currently charging). Whitlock was $54,411.

Furthermore, as stated in the minutes from that meeting, the Broadcast Works bid specifically required the company to “work in conjunction with the architect, general contractor, and sub-contractor, in addition to attending pre-construction meetings” – which SURE makes it sound like they were going to do EVERYTHING themselves and wouldn’t require the extra $10,000 “to obtain professional design” that Finley is babbling about now as he re-writes history.

Even if it WAS true, the original $33,983 PLUS another $10,000 still only comes to $43,983. Which is FAR less than the $94,682 king’s ransom that Azbell is charging them currently.

So why weren’t the magic “Buy Board” words invoked back in 2014? Why did you get three bids the first time? How did Azbell’s initial $41,000 bid (which was rejected) morph into $94,600??

Maybe Finley would try and use the excuse that, “well, we changed venues”. The problem with that excuse, is that it is debunked in black and white in Council’s own minutes on August 24, 2015. It clearly states that “Monica Wright has discussed the change of location with the IT vendor for the A/V system, and it appears cost should be equivalent to quotes received for the previously proposed Council chambers.”

Oops. No help there either.

So, no matter how much lipstick Finley puts on this pig, the facts remain:

The City DID bid this the first time [Aug 25, 2014] and there was no mention of any magic Buy Board immunity phrases back then.
Broadcast Works was lowest bid at $33,983 and Azbell’s $41,184 bid was rejected
Despite the change in venue, Monica stated that the vendor said it was cost-equivalent [Aug 24, 2015]
This was reiterated AGAIN on Sept 28, 2015 with “the audio/visual vendor toured the building and saw no problem with doing the work.“
Suddenly Azbell appears in March 2017, charges $94,675, and nobody makes a peep about it.

What about Finley’s final argument in the Dispatch, that “this is for the community”? Well, we’ll get into that in the next few posts. I’m glad Finley brought up the LEDC (Lampasas Economic Development Corp) in his Dispatch article, because they happen to be my next example of egregious waste.

Old City Hall and Azbell Screw Job – Part VI (2018 – The Current Mess)

At the end of the last chapter, you could see Finley lubing up his fist and instructing City Council to bend over. He has some new info on the Old City Hall Hose Job….here is the home stretch leading us to today:

May 14th, 2018: Finley dumps the 1.4 million pound anvil onto Council’s pointy heads. Without bothering to present the losing bids, he states that ASJ Construction was lowest qualified bid…and the following is the current situation

Base bid $890,000
Alternate #1 $25,000
Alternate #2 $128,000
Total price $1,043,000

EXCLUDED from this bid are the $125,000 for the elevator….the $60,000 for fire suppression…the $88,000 already incurred…and of course the ridiculous $83,000 audio/visual screw job, which is apparently untouchable – though for some strange reason, it says in parenthesis “some savings possible” – which is hilarious because it will end up being almost $100,000 by the time it hits the newspapers 60 days from this meeting.

So we are now at around $1,400,000…which doesn’t include cabinets, counter-tops, dais, signage, and flat work. Unsurprisingly, Finley recommends Council take this deal [take it, good and hard]. Council says “thank you sir, may I have another??” and approves this unanimously.

May 29th, 2018: Unrelated item to enrage you – health insurance costs are set to increase nearly 7% for city employees (remember those awesome benefits!) which will cost the city nearly $80,000 this year since they spend over $1,000,000.00 per year on employee health coverage. Finley states that this could be reduced if city employees are willing to pay a higher co-pay for prescriptions and he’ll go ask them! BAHAHAHAHA. Seriously?? In a shocking answer, city employees told him “no thanks, we don’t want to chip in any more for our gold-plated coverage…let the city eat it all”. Christ. Must be nice.

July 23, 2018: Monica finally officially brings this Azbell monstrosity to Council. Why now? I have no idea…the fix has been in forever, as I have documented. She states “we have been working with Azbell since March 2017” [which is when they appeared in the minutes for the very first time] – the grand total is $94,674.57. Talbert calls for a vote [apparently having absolutely no recollection that she herself already voted to award Broadcast Works the A/V contract back in August of 2014] and this ugly turd is passed.

Not a single peep from anyone present that this seems like a ludicrous amount of money to spend. Nobody remembers the $34,000 bid for the same thing in 2014. Did anyone even look at the bid sheet? Four 70-inch LCD TVs for $2150 each is the VERY FIRST ITEM. They cost $900 at Wal-Mart. This is disgraceful.

News of this abortion is reported a few days later in The Lampasas Dispatch…whereupon The Original Lampasshole reads the article and blows a gasket…leading to this blog and the detective work you see on these pages.

Aug 13, 2018: Five days into a 120-day project, ASJ is already asking for another $10,800 for Old City Hall in Change Order #1. Apparently a bathroom needed to be reconfigured, and “the price of metal went up” [you literally can’t make this stuff up]. Council, who is already committed to wasting $1.4 million dollars on this, isn’t going to let $10,800 stand in the way. Change Order #1 is approved unanimously.

Sept 20, 2018: Forty-three days into project, we find out from Finley that “Council may recall approval of roofing repair to correct material failure and scupper height [no, I don’t remember this – never saw anything about it]. Based on non-performance of the selected contractor, Staff sought a quotation through the GC of the City Hall project. Based on their inspection, roofing contractor would not guarantee the repair due to overlapping seam. He recommended a complete re-roof of both roofs [the other roof is Municipal Court…why is this all lumped in together? Two-for-one roof day?] at a cost of $45,194.

I’ll be charitable and assign only half of that $45,000 to the City Hall remodel – or another $23,000 for Change Order #2 – it is unclear if this has been approved by Council yet since the minutes are not posted for the last two meetings.

The weird thing about finding out the roof is crap and has to be COMPLETELY replaced, is that back in May 23, 2016, JNW said the building “is in good condition” and then in October 2016, Finley handed JNW a check for $18,000 for “structural analysis and provide documentation” of the building. Guess they don’t count the roof as an important part of the structure? Beats me. I’m not an architect or an engineer raking in huge fees.

November 16, 2018: Lampasas Dispatch reports another change order (#3) for ASJ Construction in the amount of $16,417.

I will keep you all up-to-date on the project as it limps along to completion. Can’t wait to see what the next change order is!