When you spend a ridiculous amount of time looking at just about every page of the City Council minutes, budgets and “expenditures over $4,000” category of Council packets (as I do), one thing REALLY stands out: Eckermann Engineering is paid a LOT of money by the City of Lampasas.
How much?
Well, just doing my own peck-and-hunt search through the year 2017, I came up with over $290,000 spread over at least a dozen “small” payments. You see $11,650 here…maybe $8,625 there….then another $11,925 the next month….followed by a fat $22,650 again the following month.
Seems ludicrous. My first thought was that this had to be wrong. After all, wouldn’t it be WAY cheaper to just put an engineer on staff if they need all this “engineering” all the time? After all, a decent engineer can probably be hired for around $65,000 and he would then be at the city’s disposal for any cockamamie and idiotic idea that may need some “engineering” (for instance, a convention center that never should have been entertained as an idea but somehow was).
Where do I come up with that $65,000 number? Well, straight from the website of the company that the City of Lampasas just hired for $120,000 to do yet ANOTHER “study” (pages 110-118) and to plan the future “economic development” of Lampasas….HALFF Associates.
[Wait…we are paying HALFF Associates $120,000 to come up with an economic development plan for Lampasas? Don’t we already have the Lampasas Economic Development Corporation hard at work on this for the last 6 years? Yes….yes we do. So why exactly have we been shelling out $100,000 per year to the LEDC staff to go to workshops, round-tables, seminars, conventions, and committee meetings to come up with “mission statements”, “vision statements” and all the other buzz words that try to justify that $100,000 per year? Good question. But we’ll get to the LEDC later. Back to Eckermann’s snout in the City trough]
So…I figured I had to be wrong about this ludicrous sum paid to Eckermann in 2017. I then requested a copy of all checks paid to Eckermann Engineering from January 1, 2012 through December 31, 2018. Here are the results – and they are shocking (totals are approximate as I rounded down):
- 2012 $67,000
- 2013 $200,000
- 2014 $86,000
- 2015 $92,000
- 2016 $84,000
- 2017 $301,000 (!!!)
- 2018 $74,000
Grand total over this period is 110 different payments for a total of $924,355.50!!! Or $132,000 per year.
That’s not including the fat chunks of money the Lampasas Economic Development Corp (LEDC) has thrown at Eckermann to play around in their ridiculous Business Park (aka, the 165 acre weed patch). How much has LEDC thrown at Eckermann? I have those numbers too:
- 2014 $36,000
- 2015 $105,000 (!!!)
- 2016 $24,000
Grand total of 18 payments for $168,740.
I’m also pretty sure City Council just agreed to hand Eckermann $100,000 to “develop the business park” – since the business park has been sitting there as an empty weed patch for over 7 years now. Also pretty sure Eckermann wanted $125,000 to develop it a month earlier, but then gave city council the bargain price of $100,000. Don’t quote me on either of those numbers – I have to go back and re-read the LEDC minutes and the City Council minutes.
This is a “Business Park” that has cost a FORTUNE with nothing to show for it. They spent huge sums of money running electricity and water to this “business park” years ago (close to a MILLION DOLLARS), and it still sits there, a giant weed patch. I will be spilling some ink on the business park boondoggle as soon as I get all my numbers together. The Business Park Boondoggle makes the City Hall “Wow Factor” Boondoggle look like small potatoes.
So, I guess I have several questions for City Hall and City Council:
ONE: Since you get multiple bids on just about everything else (except A/V systems, of course), why is Eckermann handed every single job the city comes up with? I know there are several other engineers around. Why are they not asked to bid some of these jobs? I have it on fairly good authority there are much cheaper alternatives.
TWO: If bidding some of these jobs out doesn’t drastically reduce the costs (I’m almost certain it would) then why not put a city engineer on staff for a salary FAR less than the outrageous sums you hand to Eckermann every year without bids or questions?
THREE: Why are the Eckermann bills to the city not broken down by hourly rate? As far as I can see, it shows stuff like “survey – $7,900” and that’s it. What is their hourly rate? How many hours do these jobs take? This absolutely reeks of huge scams and pork projects. I lived in Chicago for 15 years – I know a nest being feathered when I see it. Apparently City Council and Mayor Talbert don’t.
It isn’t the year 1970 with some engineer hunched over his paper with a slide rule designing the Empire State Building. It’s the year 2019 and these engineers use AutoCAD and other powerful tools. Don’t tell me it takes 100 hours at $150/hour to “engineer” a fricking water line. No way.
Maybe Mayor Talbert has the answers as she seeks her second term?