City Hall and Azbell Saga – Part III (2015 Timeline)

Things were quiet for a bit after the previous fireworks.  When I go through every single page of minutes, I not only read them all the way through, I also use keyword searches to make sure I didn’t miss anything – keywords like “Azbell”, “Monica”, “chambers”, “civic center” and maybe a couple more, as I am finding waste in other areas as well.

August 24, 2015: This is where things get a bit confusing.  Near as I can figure, they were already renovating “Old City Hall” before all this Council Chambers mess and maybe decided that instead of building an entirely new structure JUST for city council, they will locate inside newly renovated “Old City Hall” which seems so logical, I don’t know why any other ideas were even entertained.

Regardless, we see from the minutes that “Old City Hall: city staff has met with a potential elevator shaft contractor, as well as an architect and structural engineer. After the elevator has been specified and located, staff will begin soliciting trade services for plumbing, electrical and HVAC.  Monica Wright has discussed the change of location with the IT vendor for A/V system and it appears cost should be equivalent to quotes received for the previously proposed Chamber project”

[OK – so it appears the original $34,000 bid from Broadcast Works is still alive.  There has been no mention of any other deal or re-bidding of anything – gotta assume they are still talking about Broadcast Works here]

September 28, 2015: Minutes state “Update on Council chambers” – since the “Council Chambers” project is supposed to be dead, I have to once again assume they actually mean “the council chambers inside soon-to-be-renovated Old City Hall”.  Again, the way all this is worded is somewhat confusing.  But the minutes tell us that “the audio visual vendor toured the building and saw no problem with doing the work” – and also that “Mayor Toups wants to know the probable total cost of this project before proceeding any further” [not sure if this means the cost of the ENTIRE City Hall renovation or just the council chambers portion – confusing, as it seems to be a habit of some of these people to get halfway through a project before discussing cost.]

Council member Harrison [who apparently has a learning curve that looks like a flat line] said he preferred working with JNW Architects [remember them?] since “Council had worked with them before on the previous plan” [yes they did…on a plan that resembled the Bay of Pigs invasion].

Council member McCauley preferred NOT working with JNW Architects because of all the screw-ups on the last project – “which was very costly “[circle gets the square, McCauley]

November 23, 2015: Finley hands Council a proposal to let JNW Architects [again??] cash yet another $18,500 check for “architectural services” for Old City Hall.  Toups, not unlike a cow who has wandered into an electric fence one too many times, is wary of Finley bearing gifts…he asks “how many more ‘architectural services’ would need to be done after this phase and how much more cost could the city be looking at” [good question!!]

Jennifer Walker of JNW Architects [who could have played the Serpent in the garden of Eden to some acclaim] said that it depended on what was found and she couldn’t really give an amount, since no building plans exist [blank check alert!!!].  Finley backs her up: no floor plans can be found….just a few schematics.

Mike White [also clearly wary of the proverbial electric fence shock] states that “with so many unknowns, it could turn into an open-checkbook project [ding ding ding ding!!]

 

That is it for 2015….stay tuned for Part IV

Timeline for Azbell and Council Chambers Rip-Off – Part II (Talbert Digs In)

It’s starting to get good!  Grab some popcorn…

 

April 27, 2015: Squabbling continues over whether to go forward with this disaster of a project.  Here are some actual comments from the minutes that day:

Mayor Grayson says there is not enough money to cover this project.  JNW Architects [smelling more fees, no doubt] says they can do scope changes and present as alternatives.  Grayson will not give in…he says that “even taking some items out, this project is STILL over budget”.

Talbert is having none of it, however.  She asks “without a cost analysis, how can we be sure?”…and Toups comes back AGAIN with “he is not comfortable spending that kind of money”...Talbert, [determined to set fire to a LOT more public tax dollars], claims she cannot make an uneducated decision without rebidding the project”

[Yes…the minutes say “uneducated decision” – I’m not sure if this is a typo or if it is hilarious foreshadowing.  I’m going with the latter].

Toups and White keep after Talbert, saying they need to design a building they can afford to build and that this huge amount of money could be better used than spending it on a 3,600 square-foot building.  Toups says “$375,000 has already been set as the amount…this is already a high number AND IT DIDN’T MAKE CITIZENS HAPPY AND THEY CERTAINLY WOULDN’T WANT MORE SPENT.  He was turned off about this whole project and believed other necessities could be taken care of with this money.  Even with re-bidding, I am not hearing savings of $400,000.”

[AMEN MR TOUPS!  Hallelujah!  Could not have said it better myself.  But apparently, basic math escapes Misti Talbert…who is an accountant in real life.  She refuses to believe that $750,000 minus $100,000 does not equal $375,000]

Talbert, in her best impersonation of a parrot, says again that “I can’t make that decision without doing a cost analysis” [I’m starting to suspect that Misti is the “wow! factor” person]

Chuck Williamson then chimes in [in a horrific example of succumbing to The Sunk Cost Fallacy] that “the City has already spent money on this project and for furniture [LOL!] so we should keep moving forward.

[NOOOOOOOO CHUCK!!  You do NOT throw good money after bad.  You take your $100,000 lumps and look stupid for wasting $28,000 on furniture and you move on.  You DON’T keep going and end up blowing $1.3 million on an entirely new city hall to try and justify this disaster.  My god.  A man who doesn’t understand the Sunk Cost Fallacy should not be handing these sums of money.]

May 26, 2015: Toups is now sworn in as mayor.  Council chambers project will be re-bid starting June 4th and there are 5 new contractors interested in bidding.  Looks like Talbert and Williamson get their way.

June 8th, 2015: Project is re-bid.  Results are as follows:

  1. ASD $567,350.00
  2. RKJ $678,000.00
  3. MW Hail $688,777
  4. Built right $720,000

Talbert wants to review and consider.  Monroe and Williamson want to take  no action tonight.

Toups (now mayor) reiterates his position – that this is $200,000 over budget and the money could be better used.  Council needs to stick to its budget.  Monroe waffles and agrees that this bid was not a complete bid and this project could end up costing a million dollars [talk about being prescient…it’s about $1.3 million and counting as of Sept 2018]

Talbert caves and moves to reject all bids….seconded by White…motion is carried by unanimous vote.  So this thing should be dead and buried….but is it??  Stay tuned for PART III…..

 

Timeline and Questions for Azbell $100,000.00 A/V Rip-off – PART I (Birth of a Bad Idea)

OK – so, I have spent about 48 hours reading through every single page of every city council minutes since January 1, 2013 (first available online) to try and piece together this Azbell debacle.  That means I have probably spent about 45 more hours than city council has spent on this to date.

Here is a synopsis timeline and my comments in bracketed italics.  I know some parts may make eyes glaze over, but PLEASE read it through – you will be shocked.  The incompetence is stunning.  I have also broken all this into six separate blog posts, so as to be digested easier.

Late 2013 and early 2014: City council gets a bug up their butt about needing new chambers.  I have no idea why new chambers were supposedly needed, but approximately $350,000 was earmarked for the project.  They hire an architect [JNW Architect at a cost of $35,000] and intermittently argue at council meetings over the rest of the year about whether this is a good use of funds.

AUGUST 24, 2014: Monica Wright returns to City Council with three bids for an audio/visual system [yes, this seems very premature since there aren’t even any plans yet, but this is par for the course…]

  1. Broadcast Works   $33,983.00
  2. Azbell    $41,184.00
  3. Whitlock  $54,411.36 

Monica then recommends they go with Broadcast Works.  Then-councilman Chris Toups moves to award the contract, and then-councilwoman (and current mayor) MISTI TALBERT seconds this motion.  It is then unanimously approved (Mike White is present at this meeting and approves).

All well and good.  Three bids were gotten, the lowest one wins, and the matter is settled.  Or is it?  [Why are they getting bids on an AV system before anything else is even decided on or planned out?  It would be like, oh I don’t know, buying $13,000 worth of chairs before you even had a blueprint….]

MARCH 30, 2015: Special minutes show that two bids came in for the new council chambers project.

  1. MW Hail Construction: $778,502
  2. RKJ Construction $793,379

OOPS!!!  These numbers are more than DOUBLE what they have budgeted!!

Council members stare, mouth agape and eyes boggling, and ask why it’s so much money?  They also asked why the bids were not broken down more.  Then deGraffenreid said he met with city attorney JC Brown, and she suggested NOT to meet with the contractors so there would be no hint of favoritism.  She suggested the bids be rejected and scope of services revised – she would then meet with the contractors and find out why bids were so high.

Jennifer Walker (JNW Architects) said she and city manager Finley will meet and try to figure this out.  She could not answer what drove the bid so high because the bids were not by component or broken down [Duuuhh…don’t ask me!  I’m just the $35,000 architect!]

April 13, 2015: This is where things really go off the rails and the sh*t hits the fan and fingers get pointed.  This is a good one, so read it all!

Apparently the big cost overrun is related to the base pad.  If they take out the base pad, and have the city build it, they can save $100,000 – but many contractors won’t build on a pad built by the city [liability, I’m guessing] and city crews do not have experience building pads.  Not to mention, it will take them away from their city jobs AND the project is STILL at least $250,000 over budget.  Mike White [to his credit] says he does not like the idea of the City crews building the pad.

Mayor Grayson, and council members Toups and White stated they do not feel comfortable constructing a building if it will cost $700,000 [YAY!  Fiscal sanity for a brief moment]

[This should have been the end of this disaster.  They wanted something…they budgeted X dollars…the bids were twice that…so they can’t do it.  End of story.  Who kept this train wreck going?  Who acted like 4-year-olds and said “I want I want I want I want”?]

Mayor Pro Tem Wanda Biershwale, Council members TJ Monroe, Chuck Williamson and Misti Talbert stated they would like to see new bids.

[Toups, White and Grayson clearly saw that this was a disaster-in-the-making and pushed against.  More than a few times, Toups stated the city had better uses for this money.  Monroe, Williamson, Talbert and Biershwale kept this disaster alive another day.  Biershwale is now gone but the others STILL sit on council and Talbert is mayor].

So…who bungled this so badly?  Finley’s name pops up a few times in the following discussion of “why is the cost double what we budgeted?”.  Some ‘answers’ were fleshed out:

It is then stated that the City has already incurred the following expenses for this debacle:

$28,338 on furnishings [yes, they were buying furniture before they even had a plan done – including $12,780 on 100 stacking chairs, because “we needed to spend our year end funds”]

$33,983 for AV bid [this is the Broadcast Works bid from above, and the minutes EXPLICITLY use the words ‘expenses INCURRED‘ – so did they already hand Broadcast Works $33,983?  Nothing would surprise me with this group]

$35,000 to JNW Architect, the geniuses in charge who didn’t think to get a cost analysis done first.  Total clowns.

$7,313 for curbing and a pad for a generator

$5,596 for Geotechnical engineering survey

With $100,000 already burned in this dumpster fire, Council goes looking for an explanation and maybe an ass or two to kick….and more than a few fingers are pointed at Finley.  To wit:

Council asks why the cost is double and why wasn’t a cost analysis done?  Now Finley does a bit of backpedaling, as the minutes state “the budgeted amount was suggested by Finley as just ‘a starting point for planning’ [ah yes…we can’t stick to a budget, so we’ll say it was just a starting point].

Furthermore, JNW Architect “did not do a cost analysis because it was not part of their contract with the city” – sounds like Finley bungling, since I’m guessing he wrote the contract (?).  Pretty big screw-up for a City Manager who has been doing this for at least 7 years.

Also, JNW Architect “designed the building by what the city wanted and not by what was budgeted” – say what???  This is a MASSIVE screw-up on either Finley’s part or the part of JNW.  This is a HUGE miscommunication at best.  Downright extreme incompetence at worst.

Was anyone taken to the woodshed over this?  Did heads roll?  Of course not.  This is City Government and par for the course.  So now Council decides they have three options going forward:

  1. Terminate agreements and end project [this is what should have happened].
  2. Change to a metal building to maybe reduce costs.
  3. Re-budget and cough up the money to “keep the WOW! factor the city deserves” [yes, they ACTUALLY SAID THAT…it is in the minutes.  Some of the people in charge of millions of dollars are making decisions on based on “wow” factors.  Presumably as in  “WOW, they are a bunch of morons to get ripped-off like that” or maybe “WOW! They must let the mentally retarded hold the purse strings in that city”]

Well…we all know they chose the worst option.  I will continue in Part II later today or tomorrow.

Hold the Phones Chuck…Monica Wright DID Do Her Job Perfectly (in 2014) – Why Is She Covering for Morons Above Her?

I may owe Monica Wright a partial apology!  I have spent DOZENS of hours reading every page of the City Council minutes starting in January of 2013 (which are the very first minutes available on the website) looking for clues to the current A/V debacle….and let me tell you – there are some real nuggets in there.  Waste and incompetence on a colossal scale.  We are not talking $30,000 or $60,000 here and there anymore.  We are talking in the millions now (between City Council and LEDC waste).  Millions that could have been used to lower property taxes or fix the streets or fix water mains or beautify the parks and creek areas.  Oh boy.  Where to start?

Let’s start with this crazy fact:  in August of 2014, Monica Wright DID get three bids for an A/V system for the new council chambers.  Here is the screen shot for August 25, 2014:

Monica went out and got three bids and then recommended the lowest price – which was NOT Azbell and was just under $34,000 including warranty and training.  City councilman Toups then moved to approve, it was seconded by then-councilwoman MISTI TALBERT (current mayor) and with a unanimous vote, the motion carried.  Also present at this vote were Mike White and Finley deGraffenreid – who still both hold the positions today that they held during that meeting.  Which REALLY makes me wonder why everybody was playing stupid last month when I asked REPEATEDLY and PUBLICLY why we only got one bid on the current $100,000.00 Azbell contract.  Did Finley and Misti and Mike all forget completely that there actually WERE three bids and the lowest was for $34,000?  I highly doubt it.

I have to say, I feel VERY justified now when I went insane over the current $100,000.00 cost – you can see right here, that is almost TRIPLE what is/was considered reasonable.  I will also publicly apologize to Monica Wright for dumping 100% of this debacle in her lap – but I wonder WHY she has refused to mention any of this from day one, when I politely requested a meeting with her to discuss this.  She did her job correctly and found a good price back in 2014…so why the silence all this time?

Now a ton of questions emerge: how did this number TRIPLE so quickly?  Why did city council play stupid when I asked if there were other bids, when they knew damn good and well they DID get three bids?  Did they know that if they gave me those three bid numbers, they would look even more idiotic now since they are paying close to $100,000.00 this year?

Much more to come – including city council buying 100 “stacking chairs” for almost $13,000 for a council chambers building that hadn’t even gotten out of the planning stages yet (but yes, they got two bids on the chairs!).  Why did they spend nearly $13,000 on chairs before the building was even built, a sane person might ask?  Actual answer as printed in the minutes: to spend our year-end funds.  

My god.  Can you screw up any worse?  Can you be WORSE stewards of public funds?  I wonder where those 100 chairs are currently being stored and how much they are paying to store them.  Incredible waste and stupidity on display.

Monica Wright Defended in the Comments Section….by Monica Wright

Why dont [sic] you move your sorry ass out of here if you hate it so bad. Youre [sic] a damn disgrace attacking Mrs Wright like you have. And by doing so you show what a moron you really are. You obviously have no understanding of how anything works. Theres [sic] plenty to be pissed at the city, i.e. the city manager and the council about, but cursing and degrading monica wright is Not [sic] only wrong, it’s completely misguided. You are irrational, hot headed, foul mouthed and apparently unhinged, you are stalking her on FB and apparently have a vendetta against her, why on earth would or should she meet with you? You need to get back on your meds and chill out. First of all the equipment was bought through a cooperative purchasing agreement with buyboard….look it up its [sic] a state law that you can do that. Secondly she went through months of meetings with council memebers [sic] and admin about what they wanted in the building. She only specified what she was told to put in there. Stop blaming her for doing her job.

When I first saw this comment on this post, I thought for SURE it was Monica Wright.  Who else would babble about the “buyboard”?  Who else would then say “she went through months of meetings with council memebers”[sic]?  Who else would pass the buck with a face-saver like “she only specified what she was told to put in there”?  LOL.  Only Monica Wright would do that.  [P.S. she also threw the city manager and city council under the bus in her comments!  You catching all this, Finley?? Theres [sic] plenty to be pissed at the city, i.e. the city manager and the council about]

Or maybe that was a weak attempt to throw suspicion away from herself?

Little does Monica know, but this blog records the IP address of all comments.

OOPS!! What’s IP stand for?

Luckily, there are plenty of little chirping birdies at City Hall who apparently have had enough of Saint Monica.  The IP address of that comment is 107.77.217.155 – which, when traced backwards, looks like Monica Wright’s cell phone.  You might think a big, important IT Director would at least know to mask her IP address, no?  Here is a free hint for next time, sweetie: download IP Vanish.

This is just a very tiny example of her incompetence.  I’m sitting on a mountain of evidence and my cup runneth over.  What to print first??  The money she wastes on the city website hosting with CivicPlus?  Her lack of credentials?  The whole fiber optic line thing that cost $20,000 but was never hooked up?  The ‘road trip’ with a certain former Mayor to Dallas and Austin and Round Rock to try and copy their bigger and more expensive City Council Chambers (which finally explains how you were dumb enough to sign off on a $100,000 A/V system). Hmmmm….so many choices.

Or maybe we jump straight to Tyler Technologies and how they actually do your work for you, at great cost to the taxpayer??  My, my.  So many choices.

Oh, and to the moron who commented HERE that “I hear your name, address, and business will be made public very soon. You want to be the big dog saving Lampasas then own it“?….your IP address shows up starting with 174…..which seems to be a City of Lampasas IP address – their mifi Verizon account.  Somebody over at City Hall better put the clamps on computer use for personal reasons (Finley?).  It is against the rules.  To wit:

City of Lampasas Personnel Policies 1.03: The city manager is responsible for the administration of the personnel policies and procedures.

AND

Policy 2.15 City computer systems, including Internet access and electronic mail systems, are to be used for city business…..all computer systems are city property…there is no expectation of privacy for an employee using these systems.

So, dear Finley and City Council, Monica and others have been repeatedly caught violating this rule.  What’s the punishment??  Anything?  Bueller?  Bueller?

Oh…and one more piece of evidence: Monica babbling on Facebook several times at around 2:05 pm on a Friday at work (Oct 6th, 2017)….she was yammering multiple comments to Misti, Delana and Mandy while they were at the Texas Municipal League Annual Conference last October in Houston (yes, we need three people to go to a conference…we can afford it).  Is that city work?  See photo evidence below:

Busily kissing the butts of the Mayor and a city council member.  No wonder nobody ever reins her in!  MUCH more to come soon.

UPDATE** -New comment HERE! AGAIN from the same 174 IP address (174.207.21.252) belonging to the City of Lampasas.

What Does Monica Wright Actually Do?

After looking at the structure of the IT “Department” and reading Monica’s ‘qualifications’, this is very much how I imagine the review would go if she had to explain what she does all day.  We will dive into these ‘qualifications’ and her job description in a few days.  I have LOTS of new info to compile.

Mad Dog on the Loose – Get the Muzzle

I don’t have a Facebook account, so I only know what people tell me or screenshot for me…but apparently there is a complete howling loon on the loose!  Threatening any local businesses that let me walk in their door.  Lol. I think he also threatened to shoot someone.  If I was that person, I’d be taking screenshots and calling the cops.  But I digress.

It is very entertaining to watch you chase your tails trying to figure out who I am and where I live. A few days ago, I apparently lived in Austin.  Then Round Rock.  Now I supposedly spend all my waking hours getting extremely drunk right in the middle of Lampasas town square and driving around town looking for innocent children to run over before I go home to kick my dogs and burn the American flag.

Very, very amusing.  But like they told me in the Air Force: if you are taking flak, you must be over a target.  So this only encourages me to keep going.

But I WILL do you the favor of listing all the local businesses I have frequented in the last 10 years so you can steer clear of them.  You may as well leave town after you see all the places your’re going to be boycotting, you complete and utter yam bag:

[My apologies in advance to the owners of all these fine businesses who will no longer be patronized by this jabbering clown horn of a person]

HEB, Wal-Mart, Schlotskys, Larry’s Lube, Hooten Plumbing, Family Medicine Clinic (no more lithium for you!), McDonald’s, Taco Bell, The Donut Shop, The Corner Store, Lucky Ranch (gone), The County Seat (gone), Brodi’s BBQ (gone), Twisted Oak (gone), Tractor Supply, El Rodeo, Alfredos, The Cake Lady, Putters and Gutters, Isom vets, First Texas Bank, Copy Cats, Toupsies, Brown’s Feed Store, Stripes, M&M Meats, Eve’s Cafe, Hoffpauir Feed Store, Nocked and Loaded, the gym (guessing you don’t go anyways), Advanced Window Tint, Dairy Queen, Paceline, County Inn, Mamma Jeans BBQ, Hart’s BBQ, Pizza Hut, Lampasas Inn (under  new ownership but screw them anyways, right?), Best Western, Bush’s Chicken (yummy), Auto Zone, O’Reilly Auto Parts, ACE Hardware, Spring Dry Cleaners, AT&T Store, Verizon Store.

I have had the audacity to spend money in every single one of these places.  It was extremely difficult to do, seeing as how I’m an outsider who should be keeping his mouth shut about local government.

Oh and one more thing about the “he doesn’t even live here” ‘logic’ you keep throwing out: it states clearly in the Lampasas City Personnel Manual that city employees do NOT have to live in the city!  Can you believe that??Not that I care at all, but I wonder how many of Lampasas’s 100 city employees technically live outside the city?  Might want to go yell at them as well, you ignoramus.

Document Dump – Part III (Monica’s Salary and Benefits)

Every paper-pusher government employee (and their parents) naturally think  they are overworked and underpaid.  They labor under this delusion because a lot of them have LITERALLY never worked in the private sector.  They have no clue what it is like to be under the pressure to perform value-added functions for a profit-driven firm.  They are tax TAKERS and not tax PAYERS.

Now, there are plenty of city employees who bust their ass and are probably underpaid – like the poor bastards who have to wake up at 3am and fix a broken water main or a downed power line.  The people who DO something tangible and have a valuable skill.  Monica Wright is not one of these people.

Monica is in Pay Group 30.  Which, according to the Texas State Auditors Office, means she earns between $101,630 and $171,881 per year.  A range you could drive a truck through, but for sure more than the $100,000 I have been claiming from my very first post (and for which her mommy called me a liar).  We must go to the budget to narrow it down further.

Monica is “Director” of the IT Department.  The IT Department consists of one person – the network administrator….who I suspect is some poor schlub who actually does the hard work of crawling into attics and walls to lay Ethernet cables.  I know that the Network Admin starts in Pay Group 15 (which is a salary of between $33,000 and $52,000).

So, now that we know there are only TWO people in the entire IT Department (a worker and a chick who ‘directs’ him to work) we can look at the budget figures and pin down the salary and benefits further.

In the 2017/2018 budget, the following was printed:

Full time salary: $119,394 (this number has jumped almost 14% in last two years…meaning Monica appears to have gotten a nearly 7% raise in each of the last two years.  WTF??)

Extra pay: $1,418 (I believe this is called “appreciation pay” and is essentially a bonus of one week’s salary paid in December – it is mentioned on page 29 of the employee manual)

Longevity pay: $644 (Monica gets $550 and it will jump to $700 in 2 years)

 

Then come the big fat benefits they never talk about!!

Retirement: $18,255 (according to the Employee Manual, city employees pay 7% into the Texas municipal workers retirement fund, and the city pays in TWICE that amount.  Must be nice.)

Employee insurance: $28,097 (this number has jumped 40% in two years – nobody said why in my records request.)

Three weeks of paid vacation.  Two weeks of sick days (10 days) which can be rolled into the next year if not used.  All twelve holidays off, plus any other granted by city council.  Life insurance payout of one year’s salary in the event of death (paid for by city).  She may or may not have a city car…they won’t tell me.  Oh…and around $800 stipend to pay for a phone.

The amount budgeted for “benefits” has risen 16% in the last two years.

Add all this up and the “salary and benefits” section of the budget, for two people in the IT Department, is close to $180,000.  There is no way Saint Monica makes less than her underling – so I’m guessing that $120,000 in salary is split right about $80,000 to her and $40,000 to the network admin.  Add in all the bennies and you’re talking well over $100,000 in total cost to the taxpayer.

For what?  How competent is Monica (besides the Azbell debacle, I mean)?  Does she come anywhere CLOSE to being worth $105,000 to the city??  Future posts will delve into this matter.

Document Dump – Part II (Unethical or Incompetent?)

Between the 88-page “Personnel Policies for the City of Lampasas” and the last few budgets, I was able to piece together a VERY close estimate of salaries in the IT Department.

And, I’m sorry to tell Monica’s mommy, but I was quite right about her being overpaid.  I was far too conservative with my $100,000 salary and benefit guesstimate.  Despite you calling me a liar repeatedly in public online forums, I was nearly spot on.  But we’ll get to that next – after this little nugget from the Employee Manual:

2.01 General Employee Responsibilities: The city is a public tax-supported organization.  Its employees must adhere to high standards of public service that emphasize professionalism, courtesy, and avoidance of even the appearance of illegal or unethical conduct. [emphasis mine].

Now, I guess ethics are in the eye of the beholder, but to ME, signing off on a one-bid, $100,000.00 contract with a company that the city has never before used and who is charging $2,150 for a $900 TV sure looks very fishy.  But does it rise to being unethical or is it merely gross incompetence?  Tough to say.

What IS certain is that at least NINE people signed off on this and thought it was perfectly normal.  First was Monica Wright…then her direct supervisor, Finley deGraffenreid, and then the seven people that comprise city council and the mayor.  That is ONE BIG RUBBER STAMP.  I have to assume they all read the bid sheet in its entirety and that nobody raised a peep about getting another bid or two.  Which boggles the mind.

At this point, as taxpayers, there is nothing we can do to undo this debacle.  Everyone in the chain of command has signed off on it.  Finley runs the city and city council runs Finley and that is that.  The only way any heads will roll is if it can be proven that this contract was steered to Azbell (and no other bids taken) because of the personal connections of somebody in that chain of command.  I cannot prove that, but I am definitely looking at that possibility.  It’s the only thing that makes any sense.  I just can’t believe that NINE people thought this was a good deal.  But maybe I underestimate the incompetence.

Of course, if it COULD be proved, it would violate a number of items in the Employee Manual.

2.07 Gifts and Gratuities: A city officer or employee may not accept any gift or free services from contractors, vendors, or other persons that might tend to influence his or her official actions or impair his or her independence or judgement in performance of duties for the city.

2.08 Conflict of Interest: A member of city council, the mayor, or an employee of the city shall neither have financial interests, direct or indirect, in any contract with the city, not be financially interested, directly or indirectly, in the sale to the city of any land, materials, supplies or service.

3.08 Employment of Relatives (Nepotism): Nepotism is the showing of favoritism toward a relative.  The city forbids the practice of nepotism in hiring personnel or awarding contracts.  A person who is related within the second degree by affinity (marriage) or within the third degree by consanguinity (blood, including adopted relatives) to any member of the city council or to the city manager may not be hired.

That’s it for the boring stuff.  Now, lets move on to HOW MUCH MONEY THEY ARE PAID TO MAKE THESE BAD DECISIONS!!!