“What is the shape of our organization….especially as we balance our growth with our human resources? We’ve got another new 20 rooftops over here…we’re doing 40 over here, we’re doing 25 over here…..what does it take to serve an additional 100 to 150 rooftops? That’s a conversation we need to have.”
Finley uttered those words at the last council meeting [go to 46 minute mark]. The translation is “get ready for the cost of government to increase rapidly”.
Well, well, well. So there IS another side to the “growth at any cost” that was a hallmark of the Talbert administration. I ALWAYS brought up the point that “growth” has another side to it in addition to the “increased tax base!” line that Talbert always liked to parrot. When Talbert and Finley and the rest of the Goldfish would give away hundreds of thousands of dollars to developers (Deorald Finney, S2M2 and others) they would defend themselves by saying “well, those 100 new houses will add $40,000 per year to the City coffers!”
Unfortunately, that $40k is a drop in the bucket compared to the COST of that growth. But the tiny minds of Talbert and Monroe never considered that side of the ledger.
Now, Finley may want one more cop or firefighter on the payroll – and that is a HELL of a lot more than $40,000 per year. And that is JUST the beginning of the new “unseen” costs.
Also, there have been issues lately out by the 580 Sports complex area with water pressure. Gee…why would that be? Oh yeah....the developer that TJ Monroe, Chuck Williamson and Misti Talbert voted to hand tens of thousands of dollars of free shit to is in the process of building almost SEVENTY new houses out there! I’m guessing several hundred new people sucking on the water line might have consequences there too.
To solve that “upper pressure plane” issue, the City is already spending $48,000 on a study ($48,000 is bigger than $40,000, right Mayor?) and may need to add a third pump out at the Spring Street Station. I’ll admit I am not up to speed on this issue [I will be soon], but between the study and the solution, you can bet it’ll be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars EASILY.
Schools….roads….congestion – all of those are going to cost us all a LOT more than $40,000 per year.
I’m not saying Lampasas should lock the gate and never let another home be built here. That would be ridiculous and hypocritical of me.
What I AM saying, is that Talbert and her City council were monumentally stupid in giving huge amounts of money to developers to build (roughly $100,000 to Deorald Finney’s Stone Valley and $185,000 to S2M2’s Brodie Estates). You have ONE chance to offset all those future costs related to having hundreds more people in town: you get your pound of flesh from the developers UP FRONT before they build. You hit them with impact fees and permit fees and the like.
What you DON’T do, is the exact opposite! What you DON’T do is hand them hundreds of thousands of dollars to build their houses, you colossal idiots!
If you ignore the Old City Hall disaster and the Business Park disaster, the fact that Talbert gave away well over $250,000 to developers during her time as mayor is definitely one of her biggest blunders – I’m already being proven right on that count.