Far from being questioned or chastised about the recent IT Department screw-up which left the City’s computers open to attack, Monica Can’t-Wright and her accomplice Kristy “The Joker” Acevedo were PRAISED for their “hard work during the ransomware attack”! Seriously – there were ZERO questions from City Council about how the attack happened or why the IT Department got caught with their pants down (Council minutes page 66).
Only in government work can you screw the pooch that hard and then get praise for helping to clean it up. In the private sector, you’d probably be looking for a new job. God forbid The Seven Goldfish ask a single question about the entire incident – they have already forgotten it entirely!
What exactly did Monica do to save the day? What were the “emergency protocols” the quick-thinking Monica implemented? The City won’t say! That’s right. After I requested a copy of these supposed “protocols” that Monica implemented, the City attorney, Jo-Christy Brown produced six pages of drivel (lots of billable hours!) in a letter to the Texas Attorney General’s office explaining to them why the City of Lampasas should be able to deny my request.
Of course, I know damn good and well there ARE no protocols. But Ms. Brown and the City of Lampasas are taking the ridiculous position that release of any of this data “might result in a ‘targeted attack’ towards any perceived vulnerabilities”.
So, if I were to ask the fire department any questions about how they respond to fires, they would deny my request in a tizzy because I might use that information to go and burn down some houses?? Absolutely ridiculous.
Just more of the same from the Talbert administration: screw it up then cover it up and tell the citizens to pound sand.
Since the City insists we need a $185,000 no-bid restroom at Campbell Park to handle all the throngs of people, I decided to go see how big the Labor Day holiday crowds were. I happen to drive by Campbell Park all the time and never see a soul. I thought maybe a holiday weekend might be different. Here are three photos from Campbell Park.
Not a SINGLE soul. Not only that, it was the exact same picture at Cooper Springs Park, the tennis courts, the soccer ‘complex’, the 580 Sports ‘complex’, the Riding Arena and W.M Brooks!! NOT A SINGLE PERSON using ANY of these parks. NOT ONE.
Of course, the Parks and Rec Director assures us that Campbell Park has “four big events per year”! Really? Four? What is ‘big’? Forty people? I have two words for you, you numb skulls: PORTA POTTY. Ever heard of them?
Remember these photos when the City is trying to spend hundreds of thousands on more parks amenities because “all the people” want them:
Suffice it to say that “Greasy” Chris has a history of proposing horrible and expensive ideas that seem to serve “Greasy” Chris himself. The fact he is popping up asking for money from his former Council buddies makes a lot of alarms go off.
(For those of you who don’t get it, “cost sharing” is the new bullshit term for developers who want the city to hand them large sums of your tax dollars).
This bad idea ALREADY was shot down last May, but apparently whoever pulls the strings at S2M2 decided to hire Harrison to try and sweet talk his former council buddies into forking over $125,000 – Harrison supposedly then directly contacted Misti “Drunken Sailor” Talbert and made his case again. Misti, who has never met a spending idea she didn’t agree with, now thinks this is just fine and dandy.
I dug into S2M2 Inc online and found very little: an address here in town at 202 Riverview Drive, Suite #2 and some taxpayer numbers and a charter date of September 28, 2017. Here is a photo of the front of this “corporation” (it is actually the storefront of the nice lady who does his books for him):
I had one of my private investigators dig some more and apparently the only name associated with this ‘company’ is a guy named Steven McDonald. I assume that’s where the S&M comes from. Get it?? S&M?? S2M2??
Well, this looks pretty damned greasy, if you ask me….hence the moniker “Greasy” Chris Harrison. How long has Harrison ‘worked’ for S2M2? Who the hell is Steven McDonald and why is he so keen to steal $125,000 from the taxpayers? Does he own property over there? Why does Steven McDonald list ONLY his accountant’s address in his corporate charter – which is extremely strange, in my book.
Perhaps City Council can look into those very questions instead of just handing over a chunk of money to every developer with a pulse (*cough* Deorald Finney *cough*).
Funny what you find in the City Council meeting minutes. Specifically the November 14, 2016 City Council minutes (page 2 and 3). Back in those days, the city was REALLY spending like drunken sailors and wanted to look into bathrooms for FOUR different spots – including Campbell Park.
It didn’t take me long to find the recent recommendation of Micky Tower – the Director of Parks and Recreation. The following is lifted DIRECTLY from Council’s own minutes:
Restroom capacity and recommendation for Campbell Park: – 3 toilets, 1 urinal, 2 lavatories.
Micky Tower reviewed the restroom construction costs: for a Wood Frame 3 toilets, 1 urinal and 2 lavatories with Buy Board pricing and Architectural and Engineering included:
Base Cost $83,157.00
Metal Roof $ 2,370.00
Installation $ 9,000.00
Freight/Crane $10,900.00
TOTAL $105,427
Mr Tower then went on to describe FOUR other bathroom options – NONE of them exceeded a cost of $143,000.
Does City Council not EVER look into ANYTHING they vote on? Do they just sign six-figure checks without even cursory research? I’m not even on City Council and I have a better grasp of this stuff.
Not to mention, just about everyone who is sitting on City Council today for the $185,000 screw job WAS ALSO THERE THREE YEARS AGO! They all have the memory of a goldfish, apparently! The SAME thing happened with the Azbell no-bid contract. Everyone got collective amnesia and forgot they had ALREADY awarded the A/V contract to Broadcast Works.
I guess I’ll just start calling City Council The Seven Goldfish.
Yet another example of apparent memory loss: as a council member in 2015, Talbert HERSELF previously “moved to approve the award of a bid in the amount of $18,930.00 to Whitley Steel Building Supply for the construction of a Restroom and Concession Facility to include steel package cost, foundation cost and erection cost at the Gavin Garrett Soccer Complex” (July 27, 2015 page 6-7).
Above is a photo I JUST took today of that Gavin Garret Soccer Complex restroom she approved for $18,930. Looks pretty sweet to me AND there is a concession stand included! But hey – why spend $19,000 when you can blow $185,000 instead? That’s the Lampasas Way. I can’t decide if these clowns are totally incompetent or utterly corrupt.
Oh, and they also have a couple of Porta-Potties there too – which are FAR LESS than $185,000.
…and has FOUR employees in their City Information Systems Department (page 32) yet Lampasas manages to spend JUST AS MUCH MONEY on IT ($374,000 versus $379,000).
Amazing. We have TWO ding dongs in our IT Department for a city of 7,500 citizens and manage to spend $374,000 (this year’s proposed budget).
Copperas Cove has a population of around 35,000 and an IT Department with FOUR employees, yet they spend almost the EXACT same amount.
So our IT Department costs us about FIFTY DOLLARS per citizen while Cove somehow manages to do the same job for about $11 per citizen. Cove is nearly FIVE TIMES more efficient with their tax dollars.
I never run out of ways to point out the enormous waste and incompetence of our City IT Department. Pretty sure Cove didn’t just get hacked in a cyber attack either. Just saying.
On a slightly related note, Cove spends $1.4 million per year on health insurance for their city employees – the EXACT same amount we spend despite having a (presumably) much smaller government. Put another way, every man woman and child in Lampasas kicks in $186 per year for City employee healthcare….and in Cove that number is $40. AGAIN, nearly FIVE TIMES more efficient with tax dollars.
Retirement costs follow a similar pattern: in Cove they spend $1.6 million on City worker pensions while we spend about $1.16 million. That works out to $154 per Lampasshole and only $45 per Cove citizen – or THREE times more efficient in Cove.
No matter how you slice it, the cost of Lampasas government on a per citizen basis is orders of magnitude greater than a town just 15 miles up the road. It is an absolute outrage and a testament to poor governance and poor management.
A $185,000 bathroom? Yes, it is true [page 131 and 132]. The same government that goes out and gets THREE bids for a measly $12,780 worth of stacking chairs for City Council deems it unnecessary to bother with any bids at all for a $185,000 bathroom for Campbell Park.
(I remember the Lampasas Economic Development Corporation going out and getting TWO bids for a crappy $1,500 sign for the “business park” – yet the City doesn’t see any benefit in getting several bids for a $185,000 bathroom – makes total sense, right?).
According to Council packets, the bathroom will be supplied by Restroom Facilities LTD and will be model #B424. I got in contact with this company and asked for a blueprint of the bathroom:
As you can see from the little man in a wheelchair, there is plenty of room for Bruce Haywood’s mobility scooter in there!
It is about 450 square feet with 6 toilets. So you can either look at this as $31,000 per toilet or maybe $400 per square foot. I have a friend selling a mansion in an exclusive suburb of Chicago who is asking right around $400 per square foot and not finding any takers. Makes total sense that a bathroom in a Lampasas park would cost more.
Furthermore, a local contractor is donating the pad for this building! That is about $10,000 savings right there – yet the bathroom will STILL cost $185,000?? Impossible.
Pardon my French, but this “BuyBoard” scam is a big pile of bullshit. Every time Spinley utters that word, the taxpayer gets hosed. The last time Finley uttered this magic phrase, a $34,000 A/V system that was properly bid AND AWARDED to Broadcast Works turned into a $95,000 NO BID disaster handed to Azbell Electronics.
Here is a PARTIAL list of stuff that the City has deemed worthy of going out for multiple bids on (all FAR LESS than $185,000):
100 stackable chairs – $12,780 (3 bidders)
Elevator for Old City Hall debacle – $96,000 (ignored by Chris Harrison and $126,000 bid accepted instead) (3 bidders)
A/V system for Old City Hall debacle – $34,000 bid awarded then cancelled and $95,000 no-bid contract awarded to Azbell Electronics (3 bidders originally)
Demolition of Old City Hall – $13,500 (2 bidders)
Sign for ‘business park’ – approx $1,500 (2 bidders)
Concrete/curb work for butterfly sculpture in front of city hall – approx $5,000 (2 or 3 bidders, I forget)
Repairing restroom on the 17th tee box at golf course – $5,200 (two bidders)
Shade structures at 580 Sports Complex – $15,240 (two bidders)
Re-route water and sewer lines – $11,450 (two bidders)
Construct 8-inch water line – $102,439 (two bidders)
Pipe, fittings and manholes for a sewer line – $10,656 (4 bidders)
Resurfacing four tennis courts – $18,060 (4 bidders)
Mayor Pro Tem Talbert moved to approve the award of bid in the amount of $18,930.00 to Whitley Steel Building Supply for the construction of a Restroom and Concession Facility to include steel package cost, foundation cost and erection cost at the Gavin Garrett Soccer Complex. This was PUT OUT FOR BID and THREE bidders responded (high bid was over $25,000)
So a mere four years ago, these exact same people thought it WAS wise to put a restroom out for bid – and the low bid was accepted at $18,930.
NOW, they decide on a NO-BID $185,000 restroom.
THIS is the kind of egregious wasteful spending the City does ALL THE TIME. It also explains why they are now looking to jack up tax rates, electricity rates and water rates to balance their budget. Absolutely disgusting. Misty Talbert….a drunken sailor indeed!!
I really have to wonder whose nest is getting feathered when I see absolute idiocy like this.
As many Lampassholes on Facebook were griping today about their utility bills being wrong or non-existent due to the 10-day computer outage from the recent attack, one dunce named Melissa Johnson wrote “well, you can’t really rag on the IT Department about that…after all, 20 other cities got hacked”.
I guess that is one way to look at it.
A better and more accurate way to look at it would be to say “well, 2000 other towns DIDN’T get attacked – thus 99% of the towns in Texas managed to keep their systems secured”.
Poor Misti is off to quite a rough start during her second term as mayor:
Her $1,500,000.00 Old City Hall vanity project appears to STILL not be completed (which means the $95,000 “Ferrari of A/V systems” sits unused). I have yet to see a puff piece about the finished product in the local paper and the City continues to have “community meetings” at the school cafeteria and old council chambers.
She has recently jacked taxes up to just under the rollback rate, on TOP of the increase in valuations….meaning everyone will see a nice big tax increase this year. Again.
The “business park” weed patch on which they have wasted over $1,000,000.00 was at least hidden under a rug for the last 6 years, but then recently somebody went and dumped a dead body there and brought it onto the front pages – an ugly reminder of a failed dream. Now they are scrambling again to figure out exactly what they are going to do with that albatross around their neck:
“Business Park” vision as sold to the public about six years ago…and yes, they had an ‘artists rendition’ drawn up for this.
“Business Park” reality after over $1 million dollars were wasted on it: a weed patch where a woman’s corpse was recently dumped by her killer.
.…and now this embarrassing ransomware attack on the city’s network (which took 10 days to resolve). A network run by two city workers I have pointed out as unqualified for over a year, a fact which Misti and Spinley unfortunately ignored.
What will our intrepid mayor face next? Huge cost overruns on the wastewater plant? Locusts? Plummeting sales tax revenue during the coming recession?? We shall see…..
Well, ten days after the initial ransomware attack, the City appears to have their utility department website back up! Great job tech department TSM Consulting!! Can we assume ALL systems are back to normal? Hopefully the Dispatch or Radiogram will have some real information on this.
Now, we will await a full accounting of what exactly went down, how it was solved, and what will stop it from happening again.
It’s been a while since I poked fun at the CorVive crowd…mainly because the “crowd” has dwindled to just a few suckers left holding the pyramid-shaped bag with a garage full of over-priced CorVive laxatives. But I just couldn’t pass this up – way too funny.
