Yeah, it’s a line from Platoon. Calm down.
I read in the Radiogram today that there were some fireworks at last night’s City council meeting when the skinflints in charge tried to reduce their already-meager offerings towards the annual Christmas lights at WM Brook Park!
Instead of $30k, they only want to donate $20k. They are making a big deal out of $10,000. They want more “private fundraising” to “support and offset the costs.”
[“Hey citizens! I know we keep soaking you for higher water rates, wastewater rates, electrical rates and property taxes due to several retarded mayors in a row, but YOU NEED TO COUGH UP MORE DOUGH if you want lights!!”]
Oh really? Let me give you just a TINY taste of the dumb shit you have wasted money on over the last few years and compare it to an extra $10,000 for an event that pretty much EVERYONE in town enjoys for multiple weeks at Christmas:
You are currently wasting over $2.2 million on the Hostess House (probably closer to $2.6 million by now with all the fuckups). A Hostess House that you MIGHT, if you’re lucky, make $12,000 per year off in rental fees. Minus expenses, of course.
You handed Misti Talbert close to a MILLION DOLLARS in Covid money for her failed Business Park and you believed her bullshit that tenants were “just about to move in” after falling for that line since 2004.
You wasted over $47,000 clearing concrete and drawing up an agreement with Martin Rod & Custom for an “RV and Boat Storage” business that never happened and which I WARNED YOU would never happen years ahead of time.
You just gave 5% raises to EVERYONE who works for the City – even the people who make $95,000 per year already. The AVERAGE salary and benefits for a City worker is now about $100,000. That 5% raise is TWICE what social security recipients will get for THEIR COLA. That’s a cost of about $300,000 per year in new salary in perpetuity. OH, and you also renewed the “premium” healthcare plan for all City workers despite a massive 9% increase – translating into many hundreds of thousands of dollars more.
You blew $1.5 million on a new City council chambers, when the original budget was $350,000. Part of that debacle was selling an old building for $75,000 then buying back THE SAME BUILDING 15 months later for $229,000!
You also spent $96,000 on an A/V system that was ORIGINALLY agreed to with a different company for $34,000!
You spend over $5,000 per year on an “elevator maintenance” at your fancy City council digs because the elevator company you chose bungled the job AND was the more expensive choice in the first place (by about $30,000)!!
You handed S2M2 $185,000 in “economic incentives” to build a bunch of houses that NEVER EVEN GOT BUILT! They ignored the signed agreement repeatedly.
Let not forget Deorald Finney – the developer who was gifted $72,000 in ‘free’ electrical hookups for his subdivision (Stone Valley).
Talbert and her crew also okayed blowing $180,000 on a pre-fab bathroom at Campbell Park – even though Misti herself signed off on a combo concessions stand AND restrooms at Garret Soccer Complex for only $19,000 prior to that! It never registered in her pea brain that she shouldn’t pay almost TEN TIMES MORE than she did previously for LESS building!
You blew $120,000 with Halff Associates back in 2019 for them to run a SURVEY of the City to help “plan the future of Lampasas.”
If you search this blog going back SEVEN YEARS you will find DOZENS and DOZENS of shady deals, no-bid bullshit, and MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of dollars wasted on moronic and fruitless STUPIDITY!! Pavilions that cost 3x what they should. Skate parks that mysteriously double in price because “diesel” and all sorts of other shenanigans. But you’re being assholes about a measly ten thousand dollars?!?!?!
Not only should you give Christmas on the Creek the $30,000 you gave them last year, you should give them $50,000 for being such horrible stewards of tax dollars and wasting so much money on outrageously useless garbage.
Do me a favor and forward this article along to everyone you know in town. Maybe someone can put it on LCBN page or something.