handouts – The Original Lampasshole

Here’s A Crazy Idea

I realize this is a radical idea, but perhaps sticking a pump into the spokes of the wheels of the economy and then paying dearly for the damage is not actually sound economic policy. Perhaps, in fact, it encourages more stupid policy in the future by deferring the costs of bad policy.

“Who should get what government stimulus poured into their trough?” seems to be the big question today.

I have a plan. It’s gonna sound crazy:

What if we let the private sector pay people to go to work and provide goods and services that other people want?

LEDC Trying To Buy Your Love and Distract From Millions Wasted Elsewhere

The LEDC is clearly trying to improve their image by handing out up to $100,000 in grants (free money) to local businesses hurt by the Wuhan virus forced closings. They will do this in chunks of up to a $3,000 maximum per business. You can see the details HERE [page 4 and 5].

It makes sense that they do this. After all, it would look pretty awful for Mandy Walsh to cost the taxpayers her usual $101,285 in salary [page 82] and benefits as LEDC ‘Director’ for doing nothing while the peons who pay her salary are suffering. The LEDC skims about $300,000 a year in sales taxes to play with on their pet projects….so I guess they figure they better throw a few crumbs to the unwashed masses. Otherwise, people might start taking notice of their mammoth waste.

Roughly $4 MILLION tax dollars skimmed in 18 years (2019 estimate at $300,000)

So, between the LEDC skim of $300,000 PLUS Mandy’s salary/benefits of over $101,000 PLUS all the ridiculous conventions she goes to (like the TML nonsense) – we are approaching maybe $420,000 PER YEAR being squandered.

Now, as much as I prefer some actual taxpayers getting a sliver of their taxes handed back to them, I would MUCH prefer the LEDC didn’t exist in the first place. They have wasted MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of dollars over the years with pretty much nothing to show for it.

So NOW they are going to assemble a special blue-ribbon panel (see video below) to decide who gets some $1000 or $3000 bones thrown to them. Who comprises this august group which will decide who gets some candy? Well, a lot of the same names you hear all the time: TJ Monroe (LOL)…Finley deGraffenreid…Mandy Walsh…Misti Talbert.

I picture something like this – from Revenge of the Nerds. The nerds are the poor business owners groveling to TJ and Mandy for some crumbs. Mandy Walsh is Stan Gable laughing at you saps! Kneel gentlemen!!

City Council Special Session Tonight at 5:30pm – ** Updated As We Go!!

I’ll be live updating again. Can’t wait to hear all the details of Mandy’s ‘free LEDC money’ proposal!

5:35pm – Council being fashionably late. A whopping 14 people are waiting on-line to watch. About the same as last live-stream. Good thing you built that $1.5 million vanity project to hold 100 citizens. LOL. Can’t even get more than 14 to watch the easy way. SAD!

Video cuts in at 5:35pm, looks like meeting was already underway – nice job guys! Finley in the middle of a dissertation.

5:40pm – down to 12 people watching on-line. A citizen has called in. Can’t hear shit through the $96,000 A/V system, however. No idea what he’s rambling about. Mike White says they will probably have to pull from reserves this year to balance the budget. I’d say that’s most definitely true.

5:47pm – I will say, it IS nice to hear council argue over a proposal instead of rubber stamping something 7-0, as they usually do. Misti making her case that SHE (and council) shut down the businesses and therefor SHE (and council) have to pay something back. I don’t entirely disagree with that logic, except you should have let things open back up already. Two weeks is one thing. Two months is another. Let the damn businesses OPEN BACK UP, as I’ve argued before.

I love watching Randy Clark frustrate the rest of City council with his million questions. Just saying. He’s probably a nice guy but seems like he doesn’t know where he is most of the time.

5:52pm – this is devolving into quite a mess. Bottom line is you will NEVER make an electric utility payout plan that will make everyone happy. Somebody (probably many somebodies) will get hosed badly. It’s a no-win situation. Holy shit! There are 16 people watching! I’m guessing half are readers here at Lampasshole.com

5:54pm – TJ Monroe is yammering now. She still hasn’t learned how to talk into her $250 microphone, so it is all unintelligible. No great loss – she’s usually wrong on every issue. Up to 18 people watching this circus! Oops – there’s the 7-0 rubber stamp – a unanimous vote to implement some kind of two-tiered utility relief thingy. No idea what the wording is.

6:00pm – discussing waiving credit card fees for people paying their utilities. Very stupid idea. People can still pay other ways – the City incurs the cost from the credit card companies and those will not be waived. City will eat roughly $5,600 a month if they waive these fees. Council getting carried away with the giving spirit (*cough Kuehne cough*). Easy to do when they money isn’t yours! We’re at 22 people watching. Holy shit. Delana Toups arguing the correct side of the CC fee waiver. Hell hath frozen over.

Randy Clark back muddying the water with circular questions once again! BAHAHAHAHAHA. I’d go nuts if I had to sit on council with this guy. You guys REALLY need to turn on comments on YouTube. I think you’d get WAY more people if we could make jokes about all this shit in real-time.

6:07pm – I can’t believe they are wasting this much time on waiving CC fees. They should NOT be waived. If only they spent this much time worrying about $96,000 no-bid A/V systems and $180,000 no-bid bathrooms. CC fee waiver is voted upon…goes down 3-4 as it should. TJ Monroe on the wrong side of that too. Shocker. Kuehne and Randy Clark join her on wrong side…but to be fair, I’m not sure Randy knows what planet he is on.

6:10pm – discussing re-opening the golf course. DO IT!!! Jesus. Van Berry (golf course head honcho) arguing his case. Van and Ricky Roy (from my impression in the minutes over the years) are two of the few City employees with their heads NOT buried in their ass. Love to see a Berry/Roy ticket running for City Mayor and VP for life. Hell yeah. Van has clearly put a ton of thought into this – already figured out the flags, the rakes and water fountains. You City council bozos need to put Van Berry in charge of the entire City.

Aahhhhh shit. Randy Clark in there asking silly questions again. I think I’m going to call him “The Speed Bump” because he completely slows down every discussion.

6:15pm – golf course will reopen (unanimous vote). YAY! Now Finley is talking about telephone poles. Excuse me while I refill my vodka and take a shit. This might be a while. Twenty people watching online.

6:20pm – Holy Christ. Misti discussing changing her “closed forever” order when it comes to the Chinese virus. She is making a TON of sense. She even said “personal responsibility” when it comes to protecting your own health. Good for her. Perhaps I’ve been to hard on her. She is running this meeting like a boss. Finley is falling in line too. Wow. I am fairly shocked. Great job guys!!!!

My YouTube feed has frozen up. Pretty sure Mandy Walsh is supposed to make her case for the $3,000 handouts from the LEDC. Still waiting….

UPDATE Tuesday morning- well, it appears Mandy and her LEDC proposal were jammed into that first couple minutes of the meeting that did not get shown on live-stream. It is on the audio version, which can be found HERE. I’ll cover this in a later post.

LEDC OK With Puking ‘Business Park’ Land Below Value

The Lampasas Economic Dunces Club “Incentive Guidelines and Principles” [page 7] is a gift that keeps giving. A never-ending list of bad ideas and tax money giveaways. I already covered the “affordable housing” nonsense…now we get to the land giveaways:

Please turn your attention again to page 10 Section 4 – Types of Benefits and scroll down to 4.01 Land Grants:

“The LEDC currently owns more than 165 acres of real property for development by primary employers. The first preference for the LEDC is to sell property AT OR BELOW MARKET VALUE to qualified applicants.”

Wait….what? Here I thought the LEDC has been ‘developing’ this land for the last 7 years and $1.5 million dollars. This says they want to let the ‘primary employers’ develop it! Which is it? Why is Pope Eckermann hoovering up $100,000 to ‘develop’ the park as we speak if you want the ‘primary employer’ to develop it?

But even more confusing is this: if your first preference is to just SELL the property (at BELOW market value, no less) then why were you previously projecting ‘business’ park revenue of $250,000 per year?

Remember this from September 2014? =====>

“The LEDC’s new debt service payment will be about $150,000 a year, Mrs. Masonheimer said. The economic development corporation projects annual revenue of about $250,000, which will leave approximately $100,000 for operating costs after making loan payments.”

I just assumed that $250,000 per year in revenue was to come from renting or leasing the land you already wasted $2.5 million dollars on buying and ‘developing‘. NOW you say your first preference is to SELL the land? AT BELOW MARKET price?? LOL. How do you make revenue on an asset you already sold on the cheap? I’d love to know.

Maybe they think they’ll face rape the new employer on electricity prices to make up for all their other screw-ups (like the City currently does to its residents)? That will never happen. A private business is so much smarter than the LEDC, and the LEDC will be SO desperate to get SOMEONE in there to prove the project was a good idea that they will CAVE to the inevitable demands by the employer for a cut-rate electricity deal. I guarantee it.

We’ll dig deeper into the “Incentive Guidelines” in upcoming posts.