grant application – The Original Lampasshole

Wading Through Mandy Walsh’s Hip-Deep Horse Shit – PART III

Our final piece on the LEDC ‘business park’ boondoggle/money grab. To continue dissecting the Dispatch puff-piece:

“Currently, the city does not own land that could host a large primary employer”

This statement confuses the hell out of me. My first response is “so what?” – why does the City need to own all the land first before it’s sold to any business? We already have real estate agents to facilitate transfer of property from, say, the rancher to the Big Box Store.

Secondly, what the hell do you call the 165-acre albatross around your neck that IS the business park?? Are you picking nits and saying the CITY doesn’t own it, the LEDC does? Again – so what? No idea what this babbling nonsense means here. Neither the City NOR the LEDC should be in the business of land speculation and/or development, because those organizations are completely populated by dunces.

In the grand finale, Finley “Spinley” DeGraffenreid has to parrot the exact same bullshit he has been saying for at LEAST 7 years. Blah, blah, blah…dividends for the local economy. Where have I heard his bullshit before? Oh yes…the LAST time the City begged for a million bucks to “develop” the park and “make it shovel ready” back in 2014. Here are a couple of Finley quotes from the past:

“We’re at a point now that we have to make that property marketable, otherwise it won’t be developed,” – Finley in August 2020 (last week)

The LEDC was “proactive,” deGraffenried said, in acquiring the U.S. 183 property several years ago for a business park. The goal of utility extensions, the city manager said, is to develop the land into a site that can promote economic growth. – June 17, 2014 (WHOOPS!)

“DeGraffenried said the LEDC was bold in its decisions to purchase the business park property and extend utilities to it. The city manager predicted Lampasas will enjoy many “spin-off benefits” throughout the city because of the utility work. ” – Oct 23, 2015 (OOPSIE! Wrong again!)

So it was developed with a million bucks back in 2014 but apparently still isn’t developed and isn’t marketable.

Wait a sec…the land it not marketable? Hold on here. I remember the LEDC spending boat loads of money to market it with videos, pamphlets, brochures, etc. Hold on a minute. Let me check my notes….

Ah yes – here are some expenditures made to “market” the ~~corpse repository~~ ‘business park’ YEARS AGO…so I guess it actually WAS marketable at one point?

Neon Cloud Productions (promotion video of weed patch) – $3,354.86

Zoom Advertising – logos, magazine ad (LOL!), art work, banner art, business cards (yes, all for a ‘Business Park’ that does STILL not exist 6.5 years later) – $2,190

Only Finley and his gang of dipshits would spend $5,500 marketing land that they now claim can’t be marketed.

I guess the business park is like Schrödinger’s cat: it is both developed and undeveloped at the same time. It is also marketable yet unmarketable. It exists in two quantum states?

We end the Dispatch article with the usual coup de grace of bullshit – the “artists rendition” of the business park.

The REALITY is the photo I took myself below:

Shovel ready since Q4 2015!! LOL!

Wading Through Mandy Walsh’s Hip-Deep Horse Shit – PART II

We already covered the first part of the Dispatch article. Let’s continue….

I think I pretty well already destroyed the ‘economic injury’ claim in the first red box highlighted above. There WAS NO ‘ECONOMIC INJURY’ to Lampasas. Quite the opposite. You can re-read the entire argument HERE.

Notice how by calling this a ‘disaster’ Mandy and the LEDC (and City council) are able to grab a MUCH HIGHER chunk of money they don’t deserve. They can steal 80% of the funding instead of just 50%.

I’m not going to argue that the ‘business park’ isn’t a disaster. It totally is. But it is a disaster 17 years in the making – NOT a disaster because of Covid-19. The LEDC, Mandy Walsh and every single member of City council are acting like scum bag liberals by “never letting a crisis go to waste”.

Every community has been impacted by Covid19? Probably true. Have they all been NEGATIVELY impacted and should be handed almost $1 million to waste on a project that is a 17-year-old, multi-million dollar failure ALREADY? No – that is a lie. Lampasas has come out ahead in all this so far, as I have shown repeatedly. The City is ALREADY getting free stuff to cover all their expenses for things like Plexiglas at City Hall, etc. That is a SEPARATE GRANT – so we are ALREADY getting money for that stuff.

‘She hopes the application will be completed in a month or two‘? That’s funny. BEFORE, it was going to be done by July 31st. I have very little doubt in my mind that it’s already been completed. So WHY would Mandy and the LEDC wait one minute longer than necessary to try and grab free stuff? I have my suspicions but I don’t want to lead them down any paths they haven’t thought to take themselves. I’ll reveal that thought after the grant is actually submitted.

“Walsh said the park would accommodate local businesses’ expansion, as well as attract new businesses to Lampasas. We have businesses here that are ready to grow, they’re ready to add more employees and expand their business,” she said. “If we had space for them, we would see a lot of our current businesses thrive.”

This is just a colossal pile of nonsense. As if the poor, dumb business owners in our town just HAVE TO HAVE Mandy and the LEDC hold their hand and gift them some land so they can expand. They are just BURSTING AT THE SEAMS but are too stupid to realize they can go out and buy land on their own from a private citizen who is selling. Only Mandy Walsh and her clip board can save the day! The same Mandy Walsh who has never run a business in her life.

OK. If you say so.

I’m wondering how Wal-Mart ever got built in our town without Mandy and the LEDC to hand them free stuff. Or Putter & Gutters. Or Bill’s Burgers. Or that building that Lotus Spa now occupies. How they hell did they even START in business without the geniuses at the LEDC to guide them and hand them “City” land?

I ask AGAIN: WHAT ARE THE NAMES OF THESE BUSINESSES that are so “ready to grow” and “add more employees”? Once again -MANDY NEVER NAMES A SINGLE BUSINESS. She can’t. If she did, it would be too easy for me to go digging and asking questions and her bullshit narrative would collapse.

Part III coming up…..

Business Park Grant Application Resolution Contains Giant Lie

The Dispatch published a giant puff-piece (which I will pick apart in my next post) on the LEDC “business park” and their current attempt to grab federal tax dollars they are NOT (in my opinion) entitled to. It is a welfare queen move and a complete scumbag move. It is no different than scumbag liberal politicians in California or Chicago begging for federal taxes to balance their budgets. Budgets that were ruined FAR before Wuhan Flu came onto the scene.

According to the Dispatch articls:

Projects that respond to “ECONOMIC INJURY as a result of coronavirus”

Funny – it sure doesn’t seem like the City has suffered any “economic injury” to me. Quite the opposite, in fact. They are sitting on a pile of money, according to City Manager Finley DeGraffenreid (who is paid $140,000 per year + roughly $30,000 in benefits):

Things are so good, in fact, Finley recommends giving the entire City workforce an across-the-board 3% raise IN ADDITION to another $40,000 in “salary adjustments” [see page 13 under “recommendations”].

Finley himself even got a $10,000 raise back in mid-May – right as the “pandemic” was supposedly raging and roughly 40 million Americans were being thrown out of work.

Furthermore, the City’s sales tax receipts have also shot upward – the complete OPPOSITE of the rest of the state of Texas.

For the month of March, the entire state of Texas sales tax revenue was DOWN approximately 5% but the City of Lampasas sales tax receipts were UP 11%!!!

For the month of April (the lock down month), Texas sales tax receipts were DOWN 12% BUT LAMPASAS SAW A NINE PERCENT INCREASE! Yes – a 9% increase year-over-year.

For the month of May (the partial re-opening month) the state of Texas as a whole saw sales tax receipts DOWN either 2.6% or 6.5% depending on which source you believe. But City of Lampasas tax receipts were UP AN ASTOUNDING 26%!!!

Yes, you read that correctly. UP TWENTY-SIX PERCENT!!!

** NEW INFO ** – For the Month of June, the state of Texas as a whole saw a 3.6% increase in sales tax receipts year-over-year – but Lampasas saw another MASSIVE JUMP AGAIN of 24%.

All these facts didn’t stop City council from lying through their teeth like scumbag welfare queens with their “Resolution Authorizing Application” for this grant – which will be made through Langford Community Management Services. You can find the entire resolution in the City council packets HERE on Page 44.

It partially reads:

“WHEREAS the ‘Applicant’ has determined that the economic activity generated from this project will positively impact the City economy, overall, which has been adversely affected by the COVID19 disaster;

City council then UNANIMOUSLY voted to approve this resolution. You can hear it HERE at the 25 minute mark.

No discussion. No questions. No comments. ALL SEVEN GOLDFISH agreed to this lie and think NOTHING of using that lie to grab federal tax dollars from innocent taxpayers in Kansas, Florida and every other state. Taxpayers who are now being forced to hand over their hard-earned money to fund the frantic fuck-up (pardon my French) that is the LEDC Business Park.

Just The Goldfish being goldfish, I guess. They have already forgotten (as Goldfish are wont to do) the 26% boom in sales tax, the $1.7 million budget surplus AND the boom in residential construction as Big City clowns rush to small towns like Lampasas to escape failed libtard policies, crime and mask police.

Furthermore, the ‘business park’ is hardly a project that “RESPONDS to economic injury’. How could it be a “response to Coronavirus injury” when it has been in existence for OVER A DECADE and Covid just appeared 7 months ago? It can’t be. So that’s yet another lie.

I’m no lawyer, but it seems to me that LYING to grab money from the government might be construed as fraud. Right Jo-Christy Brown? Not much different than disability fraud or welfare fraud, it seems to me.

I promised you all I would do everything I could to stop this theft. Remember?

Well, I will be sending ALL of this information to whomever reviews these grants at the federal level. Along with my opinion that this is outright fraud – since the City and the LEDC cannot (with a straight face) claim that the City of Lampasas was impacted negatively AT ALL by the Wuhan Flu.

Every one of you who nonchalantly voted for this lie is now officially a welfare queen and political scumbag. You are no better than a worm-like Chicago or Baltimore political parasite. It’s absolutely disgusting.