Tag: business park debacle

Councilman Bob Goodart Is a Liar

Et tu, Bob? Et tu?

I guess Goodart’s new nickname is “Brutus” – after the infamous traitor Marcus Junius Brutus.

Bob joined the crowd a few days ago as City council voted unanimously to pilfer $971,196 from City funds to waste on their goat pasture ‘business’ park debacle.

Bob sang a different tune when he was running for City council and I asked him DIRECTLY about this disaster of a project. Here is a copy of his email to me then in November of 2020:

“The business park has been a colossal waste of money to this point. The citizens of Lampasas voted to not buy the property, but then the City Manager, Mike Talbot managed to purchase the property through the Lampasas Economic Development Corporation, which is funded by the City of Lampasas.”

“The park sat for years until the decision was made to bring utilities to the park, to entice businesses. The cost to taxpayers was over 1 million dollars to bring water, sewer and electric to the property. Those utilities have sat idle for at least 5 or 6 [actually 7, now] years. I have now heard there is a plan in the works to build roads inside the park to attract business. So millions more will be spent to sit idly by until when?”

The return on investment on this property will be measured in decades instead of years at best. The best way I know to recoup any money out of this deal would be to sell it to a developer for a housing development, but the City will still lose money on it. No major business wants to build here because we are too far from the interstate, we don’t have a rail head, we don’t have the workforce to sustain it and we don’t have the things that are attractive to those businesses, such as hotels and restaurants and housing. It is my opinion it should be sold to recoup some of the money or at the very least, stop throwing money into it, until there is a firm commitment from a major business to come there.

LEDC ‘Business Park’ And Eckermann Payments (Part II)

We already covered the large amounts of payments (kinda/sorta hidden from easy view) that were made from the LEDC to Eckermann Engineering for the ‘business’ park debacle:

Eckermann Getting Sneaky-Paid

Now we I’ll walk you through a short exercise in logic:

  1. LEDC was making the first installment of those $70,800 in payments to Eckermann “for engineering services of Business Park Phase 1 Roadway and Utility Improvements” back in JUNE of 2019.
  2. It therefore follows that they were making these plans to have Eckermann “engineer” the park even before that – probably in early 2019. But for SURE in April and May of 2019.
  3. Covid-19 was not around back in June of 2019. It hadn’t been released on the world yet and would not happen for another 7 months – therefore, the LEDC and City HAD to already have a plan to pay for this “Phase I” construction, right? Their plan could NOT have been: “hey, let’s grab millions in federal Covid funds next year” because there was no such thing yet.
  4. If they DID have a plan on how to pay for all this back then, then why are they now screaming poor and talking about begging to Uncle Sam for some “Covid relief grants”? Why not go ahead with the original plan on how to pay for the Phase I plans that Eckermann was about to engineer for them (at a cost of $70k)
  5. The LEDC is funded by sales tax receipts and sales tax receipts were UP over 14% last year!! Therefore, the LEDC was not economically injured by Covid. Quite the opposite. Therefore, the original plan from May of 2019 on how the hell to pay for all of this should still be in play – nothing has changed in terms of LEDC funding
  6. If they DID NOT have a plan on how to pay for all of this after Eckmermann banged out his $70,800 master plan papers, then that is basically an admission of monumental incompetence and stupidity on the part of the LEDC and City council. They are basically telling us, “yeah, we wasted $70,800 for a pile of engineering plans, but we have no idea how we are going to fund the ACTUAL construction of those plans.

So which is it, LEDC??

Option one: you had a plan on how to pay for Phase I BEFORE you threw $70,800 at Eckermann – a plan you should still be able to use, since you have not been financially injured.

Option two: you had no idea back in June of 2019 how in the hell you were going to pay for all this and you were just winging it and playing it by ear. You were willing to waste $70,800 on plans that might never even come to fruition.

It’s either one or the other, guys.