Tag: council chambers

A YEAR After “Two Weeks To Flatten The Curve”, City Wants To Waste Money On Plexiglas Partitions For Council Chambers.

A YEAR after “two weeks to flatten the curve”, the City now wants to piss away money on plastic partitions for City council chambers.

[Find link here and go to page 21 and 22]

Talk about closing the barn door after the horse has already escaped! I can think of MANY reasons for NOT wasting money on Plexiglas for City council chambers.

Masks, Plexiglas and social distancing do NOTHING. If you still don’t understand that, you have no business making decisions for the City and their $28 million operating budget.

The “dead wood” (extremely vulnerable elderly) has pretty much all been killed off by now after 16 months. Which means this thing has already done its worst damage, by far. If you still don’t understand that, you have no business making decisions for the City and their $28 million operating budget.

Much of City council and City Hall has ALREADY gotten ‘sick’ with ‘covid’ (Talbert, Kuehne, Nelson, etc). Therefore, they are no longer at risk. If you still don’t understand that, you have no business making decisions for the City and their $28 million operating budget.

[Incidentally, Kuehne literally wore her mask EVERYWHERE and ALL THE TIME. She even spoke through it at council meetings. How’d that work out for you?]

There is a vaccine out there spreading like wildfire at over a million doses per day. I certainly won’t take it, but all the scared rabbits are. This will supposedly protect everyone. Therefore, this thing is a miniscule “threat” compared to a year ago….so why bother with this bullshit now?? If you still don’t understand that, you have no business making decisions for the City and their $28 million operating budget.

Herd immunity will be here by April, according to people who are not complete idiots like Dr. Muppet Fauci. You are in FAR less ‘danger’ than you were a year ago, when there were no partitions. If you still don’t understand that, you have no business making decisions for the City and their $28 million operating budget.

This virus is most deadly to the extremely elderly and infirm. Pretty sure nobody on City council fits that description. If you still don’t understand that, you have no business making decisions for the City and their $28 million operating budget. If you ARE elderly and infirm, don’t run for City council. Stay home and watch Wheel of Fortune for the rest of your life.

[Besides, when Myles Haider stomps TJ Monroe for the mayoral position, the average age of council will drop about 6 years anyways]

Of course, they will go ahead and waste money on these ridiculous Plexiglas theatrics anyways, despite all the reasons I’ve given NOT to. Because that’s what the morons in charge do! It’s their nature.

On the plus side, with all of these dolts sitting in their little plastic cubes, they will look even MORE like the Seven Goldfish in a fishbowl that I have been calling them for the last 2.5 years!

P.S. I am unable to copy and paste the ridiculous statement from the City about why they are doing this, so I just took a picture.

By the way, it was FLATTEN the curve – not SLOW the curve.

Typical government bureaucrats: way BEHIND the curve!!

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.