Tag: government waste

Dear Finley: You Are FULL OF CRAP [Part Two]

When we last left off, we needed to solve this “lack of applicants problem” so we can open the pools this summer. How do we do that?

Immediately, we raise the offered wage to $10/hr, and we make a lot of noise about it. Then we wait and see what happens. While we wait, let’s think about how we will PAY for this increase in wages.

The latest budget shows $75,000 allocated for “seasonal salary” at Hanna pool [page 31]. If we raise wages roughly 40%, then that line item should rise roughly 40% – or about $30,000. Gee…where are we EVER going to find $30k in the $26 million City budget? I have lots of ways…but first, allow me to rip you clowns to shreds on your wasteful spending over just the last few years.

I would like to remind Finley and The Seven Goldfish of SOME of the many times the City has wasted WAY more than $30,000 in the blink of an eye:

The $96,000 A/V system for council chambers comes to mind. You had a bid from Broadcast Works for around $35,000. You instead went no-bid with Azbell and blew an extra $60,000 right there.

You also went with a $128,000 elevator (for City Hall remodel again!) when there was a $96,000 bid on the table from Austin Elevator. That’s ANOTHER $30,000.

You sold a building for $75k then bought it back for over $200k – City Hall building AGAIN. That’s over $125,000 squandered.

You incinerated almost $170,000 on a pre-fab BATHROOM in Campbell Park….yet another no-bid project that could have been done for half of that. That’s about $80,000 wasted.

Mike White managed to find about $72,000 instantly last month to provide “free” electricity to the businesses they forced closed due to Wuhan flu. Apparently there was just $72,000 laying around unused.

Rich developer Deorald Finney was handed “free” electrical hookups for this houses in Stone Valley a year or two ago – at a cost to the City of about $72,000 in lost fees.

S2M2 was handed $150,000 for THEIR housing development after FORMER CITY COUNCIL MEMBER “Greasy” Chris Harrison begged for it.

City council and the LEDC squandered $15,000 on three giant metal letters two months ago that will supposedly sit on a pedestal in the town square and attract throngs of tourists! Where is that thing, by the way??

Don’t even get me started on the MILLIONS wasted on the moronic “business park” – which I have covered here in great detail over the last 18 months.

Do you idiot hypocrites see a pattern here?? You waste HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS when it comes to buildings/toys for government workers and politicians. You hand out gobs of money to your rich developer buddies and former council members. You jump into NO-BID contracts all the time. YET, you can’t find $30k to pay a decent wage to LOCAL KIDS working at the pool!

Aren’t you dummies always crowing about “supporting the local community”? I know Mandy Walsh does it daily. I know council members like Delana Toups and Misti Talbert parrot that line all the time too. How about “supporting the local kids” and paying them a wage for lifeguarding that isn’t a complete insult?

You all make me sick with your hypocrisy, you absolute buffoons. Excuse me while I go puke. I’ll be back for PART THREE and how we pay for this paltry $30,000 in a $26 million dollar budget.

Christmas Shopping Almost Upon Us! Tips On Wasting Large Amounts of Money – Lampasas Government Style!

You need a HUGE new TV, you say? We got ya covered! Now, you COULD buy a kick-ass 75”TV with HD 4k with ALL the bells and whistles for $953. But that isn’t Spinley and The Seven Goldfish style of shopping!

You want something smaller, MORE expensive and with worse resolution, don’t you? Of course you do! Check out this baby – only 70”and without 4k resolution – and it costs 60% more!! Curious how the picture looks? Just head on over to the new $1.5 million Fishbowl on City Council night and have a look! There are FOUR of them to gaze upon!

You’re getting there – but that STILL ain’t City-Government-level money wasting. You need to pay more….WAY more for that smaller TV set! Well, Azbell Electronics has got you covered. Chris Anelundi and the scumbags at Azbell can get you that TV for $2,148.95! And NO it doesn’t matter if you buy four of them – NO volume discount for you! Sucker!!

Just ignore those 10 microphones at $240 each…

Don’t worry if your Assistant City Manager wife/husband tells you that Azbell sells their crap at a “significant markup over other vendors” – you go and do it anyways!!! THAT’S how you piss away money, baby. Goldfish style.

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.

Monica Wright Busy Destroying Evidence of Herself Goofing Off on Facebook During Work Hours

Monica Wright, our super hard-working IT Director who screwed the taxpayers out of $100,000 last month, has been a busy little bee!  One of the questions I submitted to Jo-Christy Brown was “are there specific rules banning government employees from using social media (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc) for personal reasons during work hours?  If so, what is the punishment for violating those rules?”

There was a reason for this seemingly random question.  You see, I suspect most of these wildly overpaid government parasites do very little work during the day.  They sit there and waste the taxpayer dime posting pictures of their cat on Facebook.

Apparently word must have gotten out to Monica and she is slightly smarter than she looks.  She has been busily deleting any Facebook post that was made during working hours – and believe me, there were a lot of them.  Luckily for you, dear reader, I took a screenshot of one of them a month ago – because I know that when you turn on the lights, the roaches go scurrying for cover.  I was right…she is running for cover and deleting all the evidence.

As you can see in the photo, she posted personal photos on her page at 11:19 am on Monday July 16th.  If you go to her FB page now (go ahead and do it now, I’ll wait here….) that post is now gone.  Which means she knew damn good and well she shouldn’t have been wasting taxpayer time on that crap.  I found at least TEN instances of this last month as I went through her posts.  Looks like she scrubbed them all.  A sure sign of a guilty mind.  Makes you wonder what other things she has been up to.

So in addition to being wildly overpaid and being too lazy to get more than one bid on a huge job, she apparently has plenty of time to sit around and post personal photos on her personal Facebook page while sitting at her government job.  Must be nice!  She’s worth every penny, isn’t she?