While discussing the skate park last night, a few questions were asked.
[Frankly, it seems lately (maybe the last 9 months) a LOT more questions get asked by council. Perhaps it’s the addition of two guys who came in from the real world? I don’t know, but it is pleasing to see. It never happened under the Talbert Gang of Cronies. I think more questions and clarifications have been asked for in the last 9 months than in the previous 3.5 years, to be honest.]
Anyhow, this exchange took place at the 1:17:25 mark:
Zac Morris (addressing Finley): “So we were at about $300,000 and now… we’re at about half a million for that skate park?“
Finley: “Were it to be…[blah, blah, blah, waffle, waffle, filler talk]….it would be $470,000…correct”
Cathy Kuehne: “Wasn’t the original [estimate] for like $200 [thousand]?”
Finley: “No”
Just an absolute blatant falsehood from City Manager Finley DeGraffenreid. It takes years and years and a salary of $140,000 to be able to lie that nonchalantly and project bullshit with such confidence.
As a reminder, Finley – this comes from YOUR MINUTES on August of last year. You can link HERE and go to page 20. It was an estimate provided by FINLEY HIMSELF (also known as “staff”). Here is the screen shot:
Skate park: August 2020 estimate $200,000 – updated estimate $400,000
It doesn’t get much more clear-cut than THAT.
Of course, Finley has amassed a large body of work already in the lying department. I keep track of them over at my GLOSSARY OF TERMS. Here is the entry for Finley DeGraffenreid:
Good thing the Lampasas Economic Dunces Club is spending $7 million on a Business Pork Project to bring “high paying jobs” to Lampasas. They have been at it for almost 20 years now and have squandered millions.
Meanwhile the private sector is way ahead of them, as usual:
Mandy Walsh had zero to do with this. Misti Talbert had zero to do with this. The LEDC had absolutely zero to do with this. Yet somehow, there are some great jobs available! How did they ever do it without a bunch of bumbling morons wasting millions?? It boggles the mind.
So Wal-Mart is desperate for workers. Everyone is desperate for workers. There are WAY more jobs available than there are people to fill them, so naturally the LEDC thinks they need to spend millions to “bring jobs” here. Makes complete and total sense.
This is the SAME Misti Talbert who, when she was mayor, had trouble finding enough lifeguards to open the City pool! Truly, hers is a towering intellect and razor sharp business mind.
Speaking of Misti…she assured us a mere 7 weeks ago that there is NO commercial space in Lampasas! Her beloved Business Pork is the only game in town! She told us this when she begged the City for $971,000 for her idiotic project:
Groveling for money: lies and more lies
Makes me wonder how THIS place opened, if that’s the case….
Not to mention NextLink, PhoLicious, etc, etc, etc – how can this new place possibly exist when “there is no commercial space in Lampasas”?
Then a year later in August 2021 (page 20), we were informed that actually, the cost will be more like $400,000 – a straight doubling of cost in one year.
NOW, hidden down on page 65 of the latest council packets, Finley informs us that “consultants estimated the increased cost of construction to be on the order of $170,000“.
By my math that makes it $570,000 for this thing – but the packet (page 69) tells us $470,000
Of course, that same page also tells us a lot of what ISN’T included and will be “done by others”:
So your guess is as good as mine but I’d say we are looking at WAY over a half-million bucks for sure. Sounds very expensive to me. I paid less than that for my house – and this is just a bunch of shaped concrete. According to the plans (page 69 again) the Lampasas skate park will be 5,000 square feet.
The average price to design and build a skatepark is from $40-$60 per square foot. Most projects cost around $50 per square foot in total. Skateparks rarely are more than $65 per square footand can sometimes be as low as $25 per square foot.
At the average cost of $50 per square foot:
A 3,000 square foot skate spot will be $150,000 and will support a few skaters at a time.
An 8,000 square footskatepark will be $400,000and will serve a neighborhood of about 25,000 residents.
So we’ll get 5,000 square feet instead of 8,000, it will cost about $100,000 more than the above assumptions, and Lampasas county has pretty close to 25,000 residents. It works out to about $100 per square foot – or double what the experts say is average.
All in all, it sounds like the kind of typical fucked-up, overpriced deal that TJ Monroe and Cathy Kuehne would slobber over and call “an excellent price” while a couple hundred grand of tax dollars disappear unaccounted for into thin air (see also: Campbell Park pre-fab bathroom, new City council chambers, Azbell A/V system, Business Pork Project, RKJ elevator, etc).
I can GUARANTEE you that neither Kuehne nor Monroe (nor Williamson) has spent one second of their time Googling “skate park costs” over the last two years. This is all play money to them – especially Kuehne who is up for election next month.
One can only conclude that: a) those opposing voter ID laws (like local socialist bum Comrade Clayton Tucker) are racist/classist/elitist toward those they (incorrectly) view to be inferior and without the means and wherewithal to get a voter ID (see Ami Horowitz’s video)
Or…
b) the issue is just a smokescreen and those who oppose stricter voter ID laws really ultimately want to facilitate voter fraud and voting by non-citizens because they believe it benefits them politically in terms of obtaining and retaining power.
Catherine Groothoff recently rented out the Hostess House.
It did not go well:
The City only just barely took control of the Hostess House a mere 29 months ago! What do you think they are…miracle workers?
Catherine must be new in town or she doesn’t read here. If she DID, she would understand that the numbskulls who run the City can’t be bothered with the little things. They are too busy arguing about how to blow the next million dollars on some hare-brained project – like the Business Pork.
It’s also the reason the water fountains at the 580 Sports Complex have been non-functioning since March 2020. They cannot be bothered with something that tiny. They are too busy deciding if they should waste $1.3 million on a bike path over there that nobody will use.
No outlets anywhere. Bizarre.
Now, I’m not sure who to point the finger at…..so I’m just going to go ahead point it squarely at Cathy Kuehne since she is up for election next month and actually has a challenger. She’s also the one who was quoted that they should keep the historical look at Hostess House “even if it costs a little more“.
I always wondered why Robert Francis put his hands protectively around Comrade Clayton Tucker….
Comrade Clayton went from short hair and clothes you might find in the men’s department to looking like a lesbian at a hemp rally….
The purse…the fupa…the longer hair…
It all makes sense now….
As the kids say: “OK groomer!”
Weird. Now that Robert Francis is officially running for governor, you’d think Comrade Clayton would be pumping him (pardon the pun) on his Twitter and FB pages non-stop. But Clayton Tucker has been strangely silent about Robert’s entire campaign.
OR, maybe we need to ask Clayton to show us on a doll where Robert Francis touched her/she/him/his.
Yes, yes we know about your “big news”: you’re transitioning to female. I guess we can add “Freedom from a ball sack” to the list above.
I really hate liberals. Is that apparent yet? These aren’t the Carter liberals from my childhood who merely bleated for more welfare spending. These are complete commie lunatics who want to take down America. I cannot share Texas with them. Like termites, they should be removed and sent to California or New York
Today we have Krista Lindley:
Whenever I see someone asking for something very basic like this, I think to myself “has this person never heard of Google? This looks like a very helpless/dumb person. This person is probably a liberal”.
I’m not talking about people who ask LCBN to recommend a contractor – that is a different story. There are times you need to ask the community for a reputable painter or contractor because there are a lot of shady shits out there who will ruin your house with poor workmanship.
THIS can be solved by Googling “Lampasas appliance repair” in 3 seconds.
So I decided to dig deeper and see how liberal this moron was. If you are friends with Krista Lindley, you may want to stop reading here. I am about to rip her to pieces and it will not be pretty.
Krista is not only too stupid to use Google, she is too stupid to remember the answer to a question she already asked 3.5 years ago:
I just KNEW this had to be a Biden-loving, triple-vaxxed, BLM-cheering, free-college-loving retard.
I was right.
Over a YEAR since the “pandemic” started, and she is still too petrified to walk around outside. This shows she is incapable of reading statistics and data on Covid – because they all show that as a young female, she is not at risk. This is more evidence that she is a moron incapable of critical thinking.
She also went ahead and injected a brand-new “vaccine” into herself AND her young kid, despite this “vaccine” not being subjected to the years of testing we normally do for a “vaccine”:
Look at me! I’m a GOOD PERSON!
Yeah…I remember when I got “vaccinated” for the second and third and fourth times for polio as a kid. Totally normal to get “vaccinated” over and over, right?
She is also too stupid to see the difference between burning, looting and destroying entire cities (BLM protests) and a protest at the Capitol building where video shows Capitol police OPENING THE DOORS and waving people in. The January 6th protestors did not burn down anything or shoot anyone. That would be the Capitol police shooting an unarmed woman named Ashli Babbitt.
You see, the Capitol Police officer who murdered Ashli Babbitt was a black man…so he cannot possibly be at fault.
But to morons like Krista, they are the same thing, apparently:
Because looting and burning Target stores and electronics stores and running out with expensive stereo equipment is a completely valid and normal way to protest something in the tiny mind of Krista Lindley.
But she is a little miffed that Joe didn’t just let every deadbeat off the hook with their college loans – she thinks college should be “free”…
That way, everyone can soak the taxpayer for hundreds of thousands of dollars for useless degrees like “nutrition”:
Grad school too! What’s that like? Six years total of “eat more veggies and less McDonald’s”? Wow. Sounds like a very difficult area of study. Too bad you didn’t take a class on how to replace the drive belt on a clothes dryer though, hey?
So the guy who goes out and fixes Miss Liberal’s dryer, air-conditioning, SUV transmission, leaky faucet, etc likely said “fuck college” and went to a trade school to learn useful skills. Miss Liberal now wants THAT guy (the repair man who saved her ass) to pay for HER useless degree though his taxes.
Sounds really fair.
If you love Biden, then you obviously also love border jumpers – and you hate Trump:
No, the problem with illegal invaders is (1) they vote in elections that they are not allowed to vote in, thus putting shitheads like Greg Casar into office (2) they are a massive drain on the taxpayer through things like Medicaid, food stamps and the hiring of more teachers to teach English to illiterates.
You know what I hope? I hope that when Lampasas Appliance Repair (who kicks ass, by the way) shows up, they tell her she needs a new belt but it will be 6 months because Joe Biden’s idiotic policies have incentivized people not to work – so the belt factory had to shut down for a while.
Also, the moronic Covid lockdowns that crashed the economy (but which Krista Lindley loudly supported because she has a Nerf job herself) also shuttered 50% of the dryer belt-making factories.
Also, that dryer belt will cost 300% more than it did three years ago, because of Joe Biden’s retarded economic policies, which include printing up trillions and handing them out to deadbeats. It will also be tough to find a driver to deliver it. If we DO find a driver, there will be a 10% fuel surcharge because the price of diesel is $5 a gallon – ALSO thanks to your hero Joe Biden.
In short Krista Lindley, I hope you end up washing your clothes with two rocks in a stream and hanging them from a clothesline to dry them – because that is what they do in shit-hole socialist failed nations like Cuba and Venezuela, you absolute unmatched imbecile.
I just happened to check the ERCOT dashboard today, as I was wondering how Bruce Haywood’s beloved solar was doing on a cloudy day like today. You’d think wind would pick up the slack, but you’d be wrong:
Forecast versus REALITY
Hey, what’s a 10 GIGAWATT shortfall between friends?
The grid MUST be in balance every millisecond of every day. When you turn on a light or a heater, the grid MUST increase generated power by EXACTLY that amount. It is a miracle of modern technology.
When solar and wind shit the bed, who comes through and saves the day? That’s right – gas, oil and nuclear.
Nuclear, gas and oil are very reliable because their fuel can be stored easily. Solar and wind are extremely UNPREDICTABLE, which makes life 100x harder for grid operators.
I guess we all have different ideas about success. You could look at this and say “wow – 12 people attending in a county of 20,000 citizens is not really very successful”.
OR you could say “wow – putting that sign that said FREE SOUP under the bridge in the homeless encampment really brought in a crowd!”. Which is what this actually looks like to me.
I’ll admit, the smaller this group gets every year, the more erect I will become.
It is pretty much how I would expect a Democratic convention to be, however:
Bruce Haywood has REALLY thrown in the towel.
Moocher guy who looks like he is there for free food, has crumbs in his beard and will corner you and go into a 45-minute dissertation about how there is an engine that gets 200mpg but Big Oil bought up the patent? Check.
Dummy older guy who still wears a mask thinking it will protect him because his feeble brain has been snapped by CNN propaganda? Check.
A gaggle of old ladies who are just lonely and want someone to talk to? Check.
Female to male ratio of about 3:1? Check – which backs up my beliefs that to be a Democrat you are either a chick (mostly operate on emotion as opposed to logic) or a very stupid man (see: Bruce Haywood/Clayton Tucker/Heath Bishop).
I can forgive women falling for socialist/commie crap because their brains are wired more for emotion. They usually believe in silly things like astrology, palm reading, aromatherapy, pyramid schemes and “life coaches”.
Men who fall for this shit, on the other hand, deserve every ounce of ridicule and scorn we can muster. They should know better.
“I was told there would be free soup!”
Congratulations, Clayton Tucker! May your convention continue to draw a dozen people for years and years to come! Let’s Go Brandon!!!
In today’s Dispatch, Cathy Kuehne (who has been on City council for four years already) was asked to tell us about what she brings to the table as she runs for a third term.
After following her for four years on this blog, I can tell you with great confidence that the REAL answer to that question is an emphatic “nothing“…unless you count a lot of expensive screw-ups, ridiculous money wasting and hysteria about Covid.
She trots out her college major in Business Administration as proof of her business acumen. When you are in your 50s and still talking about what you majored in in college, you are seriously grasping at straws. Nobody gives a shit about that.
She claims that thanks to her 30-year-old BBA degree, “she learned what it takes to keep a business running efficiently and effectively…skills which I have applied to our personal business as well“
What business is that? I thought you were a public school teacher for the last 30 years? Last I checked, you and your husband are full time employees of the Lampasas School District – pulling down a combined $126,000 per year nine months….PLUS benefits, sick days, 10 days of Covid leave IN ADDITION to regular sick leave (which is no doubt abused by everyone), all federal holidays, summers off and future pensions guaranteed. All to teach ‘art’, or something.
Is she talking about her “business” of taking photos of kids sports teams? I’d call that more of a hobby. You have no employees, no suppliers, no transportation costs, no exposure to massive price in creases of your packaging costs or shipping costs – and since you and your husband BOTH have extreme job security provided by the taxpayers, you could literally run that ‘business’ at a $10,000 per year loss and it wouldn’t hurt you a bit. It is a side hustle…NOT a small business.
Here are some REAL small businesses: Cherry on Top, Lampasas Beer Market, Bill’s Burgers, Copy Cat, M&M Butcher Block, Alfredo’s, Giovanis, Legacy Awning, PhoLicious, Putters & Gutters, Eve’s Cafe. THOSE are people risking their savings and dealing with 20 different issues every day.
You take pictures of little kids.
Oooh. That sounded a bit weird. Sorry.
Unfortunately, I think Kuehne has her sights set on being mayor someday. That cannot happen. She is part of the Talbert Faction of Cronies. This includes Misti Talbert (now wreaking financial havoc at the LEDC), TJ Monroe (current mayor), and Chuck “The Vampire” Williamson (who has his strings pulled by Monroe). It is an incestuous group that has squandered incredible sums of money over the last 6 or 8 years.
All remnants of the Talbert Faction of Cronies need to be pushed out of the Lampasas political body like a large bowel movement and flushed down the toilet. We need more council members who have actually lived in the real world and run a REAL small business. Zac Morris and Herb Pearce were a good start. Replacing Kuehne with Myles Haider (small business owner) would be a great continuation of this process.
