budget – The Original Lampasshole

Budget Nuggets

City debt obligations by year:

2016/2017 – $475,300 [Toups mayor]

2017/2018 – $660,385 (+39%) [Talbert mayor]

2018/2019 – $746,171 (+13%) [Talbert]

2019/2020 – $872,995 (+17%) [Talbert]

2020/2021 – Data not listed [Talbert]

2021/2022 – $978,784 (+12% over 2019/20 numbers)

2022/2023 – $1,400,004 (+43%) [Monroe]

Debt obligations up 106% in 5 years (21% per year)

IT Department – up 54% in 5 years (11% per year)

City manager department – up 107% in 5 years (up 21.5% per year)

Population of Lampasas up approximately 5% during this time (1% per year)

Debt obligations and City manager costs rising 21x faster than population growth

IT Department spending rising 11x faster than population growth – and they STILL allowed a costly ransomware attack to cripple the City!

The Goldfish Swim Tonight: 8-09-21 Council Meeting

A weem-a-way, a weem-a-way, a weem-a-way, a weem-a-way

In the fish bowl, the pricey fish bowl, the Goldfish swim tonight!

Oooooh, oooooh eee-ooo-wam-a-way.

Join us on Gab.com – for live commentary. Find us at The Original Lampasshole.

On tap tonight – more budget talk.

14 Fish Tank Castle Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images — Monroe and Williamson sharing a single goldfish brain

The Goldfish Swim Tonight: 6-14-21 Council Meeting

A weem-a-way, a weem-a-way, a weem-a-way, a weem-a-way

In the fish bowl, the pricey fish bowl, the Goldfish swim tonight!

Oooooh, oooooh eee-ooo-wam-a-way.

Join us on Gab.com – for live commentary. Find us at The Original Lampasshole.

Tonight will be Misti-Free as Total Joke Monroe takes the reigns as Head Goldfish. Don’t worry though – Misti still sits on the LEDC board and is making poor decisions over there, so we haven’t seen the last of her yet.

Tonight’s agenda looks fairly boring. No mention of the Hostess House OR the Business Park – the two biggest boondoggles going right now.

There is an item for “budget” and for “updates related to City projects” – so perhaps those will bear fruit.

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’)

Lampasas Kinda Rhymes With “Half-Ass It” – Which is What Finley and The Seven Goldfish Do!

There was a brief moment in time where an effort was made at transparency in City government. Just look below! They actually posted proposed budgets on-line so the peons could look through them at their leisure and have their eyes goggle at the outrageous wasteful spending. Three years in a row and then a random year for the 2016-2017 budget:

Of course, nobody has bothered to post that stuff in YEARS. We just half-ass it here. No need to sweat stupid details like posting the proposed city budget when you can instead make grandiose “transparency” plans like squandering $95,000.00 on a no-bid audio/visual system with lots of bells and whistles and cameras promising to record all City Council meetings for “transparency” sake. (A system which was paid for almost a YEAR ago and was supposed to launch six months ago but which STILL sits unused in the new Council chambers in the STILL unopened $1,500,000.00 Old City Hall renovation).

No, no, little peon taxpayer. They aren’t going to use the convenient website we pay $5,000 per year to maintain and which Monica Wright is supposed to update. Instead we will demand you show up in person at the school cafeteria at 7pm on a Monday night and sit through hours of Bruce Haywood pontificating on the new Burger King. THAT’s the Lampasas Way!

Talbert Spouts a Lot of Hilarious B.S. to Justify Tax Increases

Well, Misti “Drunken Sailor” Talbert certainly has a sense of humor. This was evident with the ridiculous excuse she gave for increasing the tax rate 6.5% recently.

According to the Lampasas Dispatch, Talbert said “residents now receive a greater level of services than they did years ago, the last time the tax rate increased.”

I’ve been around here since 2011 – the last time the RATES were supposedly increased – and if there is a greater level of service since then, you sure sneaked it past me.

Unless by “services” you mean the service of taking huge piles of $100 bills from taxpayers/citizens and setting them on fire in a spectacular orgy of waste and incompetence.

You know – like the $1.5 million you blew remodeling Old City Hall, which was your signature vanity project. The waste included canceling a $34,000 A/V system that was properly bid on by Broadcast Works and instead blowing nearly $100,000 on a NO-BID A/V contract with Azbell Electronics.

That kind of service?

Or maybe the service she is referring to is taking the lowest bid of $96,000 for the Old City Hall elevator and throwing it in the trash bin and instead paying $126,000 for said elevator (which is currently 6 months past its installation date).

Maybe the “service” is blowing over $1,000,000.00 on a “Business Park” which remains an empty 165-acre weed patch used for nothing but dumping bodies?

A mayor who wastes six-figure and seven-figure sums over and over is not a mayor who is worried about money, obviously. Yet here we are a year later, and she is fine with jacking up property taxes over TWELVE PERCENT**….ready to blame the huge increase on “increased city services” instead of the piles of money wasted over the last few years on her pet projects.

** How do I get a 12% increase? Well, the average taxable value of a Lampasas residence increased over 6% last year – from $92,110 to $97,904…(must be all those newly-minted Corvive pyramid scheme millionaires in town bidding up mansions!!)

In fact, property VALUATIONS have been climbing ever since that same year of 2011 – a fact Talbert ignores when she tries to put lipstick on this pig by claiming RATES haven’t been raised since 2011. Tack on another 6.3% RATE increase on that increase valuation, and voila: over 12%.

While Talbert may be hilarious with her ridiculous explanations, in the end the joke is on the taxpayer who pays for her mistakes. As usual.

Ideas For the New Budget

Government tends to grow and grow, becoming fat and bloated, because there is no profit motive, no competition and they have a monopoly on force (i.e. if you don’t pay the ludicrous sums demanded, you go to jail or have your house taken away). Most people are extremely busy earning the very money to be grabbed by government boobs and don’t have the time to complain as their taxes inch up relentlessly (or jump dramatically as in the case of this year’s 20% property tax increases)

Eventually you end up with something like the City of Lampasas IT Department (aka the Department of Redundancy Department) which somehow blows over $300,000 per year and employs two unqualified nitwits who then hire TSM Consulting for more money to do their work for them (and who only work 10 months out of the year for a six-figure salary and benefits).

Or you end up casually paying $125,000 for an elevator for city hall when there is a perfectly good bid for $96,000 sitting on your desk.

Or you piss away nearly $100,000 on an A/V system for city council because you can’t be bothered to go out an bid the project competitively.

Or you blow a million dollars running electricity and water/sewer to a “business park” which was a moronic idea to begin with and which sits there as a 165-acre weed patch….and which I now hear rumblings may be re-purposed to provide “affordable housing” (more on this in the future).

Or you hand Halff Associates a $120,000.00 consulting fee to “plan” the Lampasas economy for you, even thought we ALREADY have a Lampasas Economic Development Corporation spending well over that amount annually.

Or you incinerate $1.5 million remodeling Old City Hall – a project that was originally rejected when it was only $350,000 but somehow grew into a $1,500,000.00 monstrosity.

Or you squander a few hundred thousand dollars on steel paneling and lights for a rodeo arena that was totally unnecessary and which just happened to be championed by a city council member who was a member of the riding club…and which I believe might be used twice a year. If that.

These irresponsible actions are the actions of a government which has WAY too much money rolling in and clearly doesn’t value it. They have enjoyed the fruits of a supposed ten-year “booming economy”, and have become very accustomed to throwing money down the toilet without a second thought.

Well, trees don’t grow to the sky and all good things come to an end. Very likely, we will experience a recession soon and these idiots will be staring at a giant six-figure hole in their budget. Which they will then plug not by lowering salaries, benefits or spending, but by jacking up your taxes and utility rates as they always do.

SO – maybe City Council should be proactive for once and cut the copious amounts of fat NOW….THIS YEAR, so they are prepared when the downturn inevitably arrives. Sounds crazy, right?? My next post will provide lots of quick and easy ways to slash spending and shrink the bloated and wasteful city government.

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.

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:

ASD $567,350.00
RKJ $678,000.00
MW Hail $688,777
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…..

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.