Monica Requested $6,216 To Replace Computer Equipment Ruined in Ransomware Attack…Ends Up Spending $9,539

In typical wasteful government fashion, the $6,216 IT Director Monica Can’t-Wright requested last month in emergency expenditures to replace equipment ruined in the Aug 16th ransomware attack has mysteriously morphed into $9,539 instead. A hefty 53% jump [page 39 – check #153230]

I suspect since this all happened right at the end of the fiscal year, she just did what all department heads do in government: use it or lose it. She pulled a similar stunt previously to “use up” funds at the end of the year buying furniture for a council chambers that was still three years from being completed.

The most sickening part is a large portion of that $9,500 is for ‘replacement monitors’. I’m sorry, but computer viruses don’t ruin monitors. So it is likely everyone just wanted fancy new monitors and decided to spend ‘leftover’ budget money on them.

I see VERY nice 27” monitors on Amazon for a measly $150. That’s a hell of a lot of monitors you can buy for $5,000 or whatever portion of $9,500 you spent on monitors. Taxpaying saps like me are sitting here typing away on a lowly 21” monitor I have had for over 10 years while these clowns blow thousands on fancy new screens to replace ‘old’ ones that are perfectly good.

The wastefulness in the IT Department is truly nauseating. But I expect nothing less from a person who has never worked a day in the private sector and who would be bagging groceries if she hadn’t fallen ass-backwards into a cushy government job in a small town. A job for which she is clearly not qualified.

Of course, this new $9,500 number pushes up my grand total for the ransomware attack damage to just a hair under $40,000. I can’t wait for the November numbers so I can see how much money we had to pay Tyler Technologies to fix the ransomware attack for Monica. Should be epic.

City Employee Benefits AGAIN Top $250,000 Per Month – A 75% Increase In Five Years

It happened back in May of this year and it just happened again in September: City employee benefit costs exceeded a quarter of a million dollars in a single month. I expect to see this occur regularly as the new fiscal year starts:

Scott and White Health Plan: $118,776.92 [check #152959]

Texas Municipal Retirement System: $138,419.15 [check #152962]

Colonial Life and Accident: $4,311.71 [check #152926]

A grand total for the MONTH of $261,507.78. That is an annual run-rate of $3,138,093.36

Yes – that’s $3.14 million dollars per year in City employee benefits. This also doesn’t count the other many little benefits the top bananas get like a cell phone stipend and a car allowance. Ain’t government work grand??

Back in October of 2014 – a mere five years ago – this same number was $149,890. It has BALLOONED by over $111,000.00 PER MONTH. That is a nearly SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT INCREASE in 5 years….or almost 15% per year.

I’ll repeat that – City employee benefits (retirement and healthcare only) have exploded almost 15% PER YEAR for the last 5 years. And Spinley deGraffenried has the balls to complain about salaries not being high enough!

Remember this number when Spinley yammers about his nonsensical “salary studies” and how our City workers just aren’t paid enough! He says they might run off to greener pastures if they don’t get a 3% raise every single year! Of course, Spinley never does a BENEFITS study. Because THAT is where the gravy is. He ignores those numbers as if they don’t exist.

The fact is, Lampasas benefits are FAR higher than those of similar cities….a fact I have unequivocally [look it up, Monica] proved over and over again. For example, our IT Department employee insurance cost is TWENTY PERCENT HIGHER than the IT Department employee cost in Burnet County….and our retirement contribution is FIFTY-FOUR PERCENT HIGHER!!

(Pretty sure Burnet County computer network didn’t get hacked into back in August, either. Just sayin’)

Texas Municipal League – A Gigantic Waste of Time and Money

It’s getting cold and feels like fall. You know what that means! Time for the Texas Municipal League Annual Conference! This is an annual circle-jerk of nonsense and bureaucratic babble, brought to you by a group that is unabashedly pro Big Government and whose number-one priority is looking out for government workers – not the taxpayer. They are first and foremost an organization BY government bureaucrats FOR government bureaucrats.…taxpayers be damned.

Naturally, Lampasas taxpayers send City employees and politicians every year to listen to this nonsense and spin their wheels….at great expense to the City of Lampasas.

We will delve into how the TML actively works to screw the taxpayer (with YOUR money) in an upcoming post. But for now, just look at some of the ridiculous session descriptions for this year! I think my favorite is number two. A stereotypical pile of bureaucratic bullshit babble filled with buzzwords and circular yammering:

Village of The Hills – Stay or Play? (presented by TCMA — Texas City Management Association)

Find the courage to break with the past in order to tackle the future. Hear insights from leaders in the Village of The Hills on how to implement cultural change.
Speakers: Eric Ovlen, Mayor, Village of the Hills

Race and Equity: How Your City Can Implement Targeted Strategies to Improve Outcomes (presented by TABCCM—Texas Association of Black City Council Members)

In this session, local leaders will explore “targeted universalism,” a strategic framework that can create the transformational changes that cities need and are looking for to improve life chances and enhance and sustain equitable policies and programs while embedding racial equity throughout the city as a core lens.
Speaker: Ariel Guerrero, Co-Founder, O&G Racial Equity Collaborative

Elevating Trust in Local Government

Be empowered with the tools necessary to tap into the hearts and minds of citizens, re-engaging them in community visioning. Specifically, learn about the differences between community-based strategic planning and other plans, the anatomy of a community-based plan, and effective techniques for engaging citizens in the planning process. Attendees will learn how to take what citizens are saying and synthesize it into clear directives for the city and ensure that their plan lasts and is implemented effectively.
Speakers: Rick Davis, City Manager, City of Baytown; Nick Woolery, Innovation and Strategy Director, City of Baytown; and Dan Griffiths

ArtoberFest Draws ‘Major’ Crowd – $115 Porta-Potties Easily Handle Bathroom Needs

So I attended ArtoberFest yesterday for the first time ever. Not out of any need to paint my face or eat food truck fare…but rather to further prove my point about the colossal waste of a NO-BID $185,000 bathroom in Campbell Park.

I would peg the crowd at maybe 100 people – and I was there at 2:30 in the afternoon. I guess that would be considered ‘major’ by Lampasas standards. Maybe another 100 moved through there during the day before and after I was there. Point being, the head of the Parks Department chimed in last month that there are “four major events a year there, so we need a bathroom” or something to that effect. My argument is that a couple of Porta-Potties should handle that need just fine – especially when your “huge crowds” of 150 people only happen about 3 to 5 total days a year (or roughly 1% of the time).

The sanitation needs were met by J Bar Sanitary Restrooms – and they were SPECTACULAR! I do not work for J Bar. I have never heard of J Bar until yesterday. But their Porta-potties are the best I have ever seen. No joke. I highly recommend. They were pristine.

And guess what else?? They are cheap as dirt! You can rent one of these for an entire WEEK for $115! That is a steal. Of course, somebody overdid it with FOUR of these things when two would have sufficed yesterday, but whatever. Here is a shot of $460 dollars worth of toilets – it would take over 100 years to spend that same $185,000 on Porta-Potties, by the way:

Extra-large model on the left accommodates those users of Haywoodian proportions

The bathroom I used looked like it hadn’t been used all day – and that was 4.5 hours into the festival. So I’m pretty sure two of these would have sufficed – for a total cost of only about $250 to the city.

But let’s take it a step further! There were about 6 food trucks and 12 other vendors there – which (according to the Chamber of Commerce website) should have brought in close to $1000 in fees from those vendors. Why should the city pay anything at all? Take the $250 from your vendor revenue and voila….a zero-cost, extremely clean bathroom at every ‘major’ event. Bathrooms that are hassle-free and DON’T NEED TO BE CLEANED by the City!!

I realize that my plan outlined above makes logical, rational and economic sense. It is bulletproof and has already been proven to work….which is why Spinley and the Seven Goldfish are ignoring it and instead plowing ahead with the idiotic $185,000 no-bid bathroom [page 67]….a bathroom that will also have to be cleaned by somebody – a somebody who will be on the City payroll [page 73] and reaping tons of benefits that will likely cost the taxpayer $30 an hour.

Spinley assures us that “the Campbell park restrooms should be delivered the first or second week of December“. Of course, he didn’t specify what year the “December” would fall in. Watch for the usual cost overruns and delays in completion like we saw with the Magic Elevator at Old City Hall.

Only in Lampasas can you find dummies who want to spend $185,000 to solve a ‘problem’ that can demonstrably be solved for $0.

How Will Spinley Spin A Rumored City Hall Departure?

Rumors have been swirling that a Big Wig in City government may have been shown the door….or resigned. This rumor was been around a while now, so I am surprised the news hasn’t broken yet. Finley must need to muster all his skills to spin this, since he’s taking forever to release it to the public (assuming this rumor is correct). I guess we’ll know soon!

Coming soon: a behind-the-scenes look at the mayhem during the Aug 16th ransomware attack. Internal emails show what REALLY went down. Only The Original Lampasshole gives you the TRUE story.

Campbell Park Usage Stats

Since the City recently declared we need a no-bid $185,000 bathroom in Campbell Park to handle the hordes of people, I decided to do an informal survey of park usage over the last month. I drive by that area quite a bit and made it a point to pull over and count the people in the park.

Cooper Springs is right across the street, so I looked at that too. Quite frankly, calling Cooper Springs a ‘park’ is a bit of a stretch. It is a big weed patch that the City mows a trail into…and it resembles just about everyone’s backyard if they let it go for a few months. But whatever….there was ONE car at Cooper Springs on the 17th. That was it.

The following shows which day of September and the time I made the observation….and then number is how many people I saw there:

  • 06 3:30pm 2 (teens)
  • 07 2:20pm 0
  • 09 1:15pm 0
  • 12 4:00pm 0
  • 14 7:30pm 0
  • 15 9:30am 0
  • 16 3:15pm 1
  • 17 9:00am 0
  • 19 10:30am 0
  • 26 9:15am 0
  • 26 3:00pm 0
  • 27 7:00pm 5 (2 were kids)
  • 28 2:00pm 0
  • 29 9:00am 0
  • 30 2:00pm 1

Admittedly, this is a small sample size, but it sure doesn’t look good for the ridiculous argument that there are throngs of people using this park and a $185,000 bathroom is a pressing need. A grand total of 9 people.

I counted one person on Sept 16th at Campbell Park – she was just walking down the sidewalk on Hackberry and not actually in the park…but I counted her anyways, since the above table is so pathetic. The guy on the 30th was painting lines on the basketball court, but I’ll count him too, I guess.

The two teens on Sept 6th appeared to be huffing glue from a paper bag but it’s hard to say for sure from a distance.

City Monkeys Pay SurveyMonkey $120,000.00 For FREE Service. Seriously.

For those of you living under a rock, the geniuses at City Hall (and the LEDC) have recently retained Halff Associates, a ‘consulting’ firm, to help “plan the future of Lampasas”.

I have largely ignored this fiasco because it is such a terrible idea and a colossal waste of time. The kinds of people who will answer this survey are the same morons who live on Facebook and say that “we need a Starbucks!” or “we need a drive-in movie theater!” and have IQs of about 86 and a net worth of $152. They haven’t the faintest clue that you need a certain sized population with a certain income level to support those types of businesses.

They think that because THEY like the idea and it “got a bunch of likes on Facebook” (yes, that really happened) that that makes it a viable business that will flourish and profit (yes, I’m looking at you Ashley Cain).

Of course, on their very next Facebook post, those same geniuses are begging people for $25 so they can ‘finish their schooling in crystal healing’ or begging for a free crib for their infant. In short, people with no money and no brains will not be good Starbucks customers. People WITH money and brains know this – which is why they won’t open a Starbucks in the first place. It would go out of business in about six weeks.

This basic fact of life is clearly lost on the “city planners” and the Lampasas Economic Development Corporation. The LEDC wastes piles of money on useless and fruitless endeavors every year: business parks, conventions, buzz words, brainstorming sessions, vision statements, Texas Municipal League conventions….and now $120,000.00 on a ‘survey’ from Halff Associates.

Out of curiosity, I finally went to waste 20 minutes of my life to take the survey – mainly to give a bunch of incorrect answers and throw off the results. Lo and behold, this big, expensive $120,000 project is actually just a survey on SurveyMonkey.com! Holy Christ! ANYBODY can go to SurveyMonkey and do their own survey! The basic plan is FREE!!! The most expensive is $75. Yet these City bozos and politicians just paid Halff Associates $120,000.00 to go and put up a survey for them! My god, how stupid can you be? They could have done this themselves FOR FREE or nearly free!

I have to hand it to Halff Associates. They look like consummate scam artists with this racket they are running. They go to some desperate dummy politicians and low-IQ City bureaucrats with the promise of “developing” the economy and “giving everyone a say in the community” or some other flowery bullshit. They charge them $120,000 for their “expertise” and then they just go to a WEBSITE THAT ALREADY EXISTS (surveymonkey.com) and throw up a survey in about 30 minutes! I bet they even use the exact same questions for every city they rip off with this scam! It’s already all written and ready to go! They are essentially stealing $120,000 from Lampasas for probably about 75 minutes of work.

When the dust settles, Lampasas will have wasted $120,000 on an essentially free service which will give answers from some of the dumbest people** in town. You gotta love government work.

[**Bruce Haywood approves of this survey]

MORE Politicians Flip-Flop On ‘Free’ Stuff

In light of the recent giveaways to developers, I thought I’d search the Dispatch archives to see if any other politicians besides “Greasy” Chris Harrison have changed their tune on handing out “free” stuff like the electrical hookups recently gifted to Deorald Finney and S2M2 Inc for their developments.

Turns out they have! The original Drunken Sailor herself, Mayor Talbert, was actually AGAINST these types of giveaways back in August of 2014. So was Chuck Williamson! Fancy that!

As usual, they were desperately looking for revenue back in 2014. Those of us in the REAL world know that government has a SPENDING problem…not a revenue problem. But dummy politicians and City bureaucrats always go looking for more money first and never look at their own ledgers for waste.

Anyways, there was a HUGE discussion in the Lampasas Dispatch Record chronicling the debate between City council about how to raise MORE money and balance the budget back then. Here are some choice excerpts [look it up, Monica] from the article along with some commentary by me:

“Another revenue idea the council discussed is charging for items – such as replacement of broken valves, meter boxes and cleanout caps – the city currently provides for free. “We’ve been giving a lot away,” Mayor Pro Tem Chuck Williamson said. – August 4th, 2017 – page 5

[Chuck Williamson is STILL on City council to this day and JUST “gave a lot away” this year to S2M2 Inc and Deorald Finney! What’s the matter Chuck?? You buddies with all these developers too? Or just going senile?]

“Mrs. Talbert said in light of discussions about taxes and utility rates, the council certainly should consider every revenue source that only impacts the person that causes the problem, or creates the cost, before everybody shares that cost.” Ms. Moreno said charges for those types of items likely will not boost total revenue much, but Mrs. Talbert said it still is an important principle” – August 4th, 2017 – page 5

[The person who creates the cost should pay for it?? Kinda like a homeowner or developer paying for their own electrical hookup? Being one of the Seven Goldfish, I doubt Misti remembers saying this but there it is in black and white! She even had “principles” back then! My, how things have changed]

And here is the coup de grace [look it up, Monica] from my new hero Shane Brown. Shane was the DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC WORKS back then, so he probably knows what he is talking about:

“Public Works Director Shane Brown said the city loses money when officials waive fees for utility extensions. Brown said he questions how much the city benefits compared to the value of what it gives away in waivers“. – August 4th, 2017 – page 5

[Amen, Mr Shane Brown! Testify! Could not have said it better myself].

Of course, this was all in 2014 before Misti transformed into an intoxicated seaman. Now it’s all about buying power, love and admiration with other people’s money in the name of “growth”…a fool’s errand. So much for her “principles” she was babbling about back then. She clearly has none.

Hiring Scumbags To Beg For Government Money Always Pays Off In Lampasas

“Greasy” Chris Harrison pulled it off! After turning down a request from PRIVATE developer S2M2 Inc for free money back in May, City Council changed their tune and decided to hand S2M2 Inc “a maximum of $150,000 for the company’s actual costs of surveying, engineering and building a rainwater detention pond in the subdivision,” now that “Greasy” Chris (former City Council member) was the one doing the asking this time for his new employer S2M2 Inc.

But that’s not all: “the city will pay to extend electric service to each of Brodie Estates’ platted residential lots. The development agreement lists an estimated city cost of $24,500” – which sounds a LOT like the sweet deal Deorald Finney got for HIS subdivision earlier this year at a cost of around $72,000 for HIS 67 houses.

These “free” electrical hookups (paid for by YOU) run roughly $1100 per house. God forbid the developer pay this and pass it along to the actual homeowner who will benefit! It might cut into his profits! When he sells a $150,000 house, he might only make $24,000 profit instead of $25,000 profit! We cannot have that!

Here’s how I think it went down (this is my opinion – not fact): S2M2 Inc bought this land, figured they could put N number of houses on it, build those houses for $X and sell them for X+$25,000 or whatever the markup is for developers….so they made a deal with the land seller and got all ready to break ground. All well and good – maybe they make a $25,000 profit on 22 houses and pocket $550,000 after all is said and done.

But THEN, they cleared some brush out and cleaned up the land a bit and realized the drainage sucked and they would have to WASTE three of their precious lots building a detention pond! That would take the profit of THREE houses out of their pockets. Let’s say it was $25,000 each (again, I am not a developer, I am pulling number from my ass that sound like realistic ballpark figures). Taking a $75,000 hit for your own screw-up is what private businesses do all the time. But developers are special private businesses (just ask Greasy Chris). They can go to the morons at the City and explain to them how this detention pond is actually in the best interest of the CITY…and not of S2M2 Inc, who is merely trying to help them out.

[Moron politicians and City bureaucrats fall victim to this faulty ‘logic’ all the time. They extend all sorts of “free” shit in the name of “growth” and “expanding the tax base” and it NEVER works out. They do not understand this or care because (1) 90% of them have never run a business (2) they are severely math challenged and (3) it’s not their money they are giving away….it’s YOURS]

It’s the same kind of idiocy that leads towns to spend $100,000 on Christmas lights and say “people will come and visit and we’ll make it all back on sales tax revenue” – which is absolute unmitigated nonsense if you are familiar with third-grade math…which most of these bozos are not.

So – back to our story. A regular, honest, stand-up private business owner would eat the $75,000 and chalk it up to experience. But these scumbags figure, “hey! Let’s go ask the City to ‘cost share’ this with us…we might get $150,000 out of this to make up for our huge blunder!” – after all, the worst they can say is ‘no’, and we’re right back where we started. There is zero downside to begging, in other words.

So, ask the City is what they did. The City said “NO” back in May, as the Dispatch article reported….which was the proper thing to do. But these scumbags took it a step further. They didn’t give up! They then sent in FORMER CITY COUNCIL MEMBER Greasy Chris Harrison to ask AGAIN.

Lo and behold! Mayor Talbert then decided that “City officials need to think again about a detention pond“…because Misti “Drunken Sailor” Talbert apparently equates spending lots of money with being an effective Mayor, from what I’ve seen over the last two years.

Oh…and Chris Harrison owns a dirt works company as well. Lol. You really can’t make this stuff up. Will The Seven Goldfish look into who S2M2 Inc hires to do the dirt work? Will The Seven Goldfish ask to see how much it ACTUALLY cost instead of just accepting the $150,000 figure? Of course not. It ain’t their money.