Tag: Hostess House debacle

City To Seriously Consider Blowing $2,212,950 On Hostess House “Rehab.” Over TEN TIMES Original Estimates!

Just don’t call it a remodel or a renovation. Those are “no no” words and conjure up memories of the $1,500,000 Old City Hall REMODEL fuckups back in 2017/2018/2019.

(As a reminder, the Old City Hall remodel was originally supposed to cost $350,000 and they thought THAT was too much! Final cost: well over $1.5 million)

You can call it a “rehabilitation” or a “refresh” or “redesign” if you like. I call it a giant cock up the ass of the taxpayers.

Remember: the Hostess House only brings in about $12,000 per year after expenses. They could literally just take that $2.2 million and throw it into t-bills and make 10x the return.

In case you forgot how we got here:

In the fall of 2019, the City took over the building from the DAR. According to them, it just needed some “minor repairs” and “minor decorations”…..

THEN it jumped up to “about $200,000”, according to City Manager Finley deGraffenreid in the Lampasas Dispatch in March 2021:

[But when computing things using FinleyMath(TM), you ALWAYS have to add a zero at the end. Like owning a boat. That $3 bracket for your home ends up costing $30 at the marine depot! It has happened over and over and over again. Thus, $200,000 becomes $2,000,000]

THEN it ballooned to $1,308,670 – which is a sick joke all by itself. Morons like Cathy “Pork Chop” Kuehne said they should keep the historical look “even if it costs more.”

Why not? It’s not her money! It’s just play money, apparently!

THEN it jumped again up to $1,879,483.55 [see page 67]

“Scope creep” means dummy council members throwing in everything on their wish list.

But wait…there’s more!

It jumped YET AGAIN to $2.15 million!

Then last February, City council dropped a load in their panties as they saw bids come in even higher than their ridiculous estimates:

So they had to go back to the drawing board. This, of course, costs MORE money to “revise” stuff as they decided to take out to 24k-gold toilets and diamond-crusted doorknobs….

Now they will probably pay $2.2 million and tell us it’s a DEAL because that is DOWN from the $2.97 million estimate last year! See how it works? No mention that it’s actually TEN TIMES MORE than they budgeted. Actually, probably 30 times more, since it originally was just “minor repairs,” they assured us.

Prediction: this will pass at $2.2 million on Monday night…but halfway through the construction, a LOT of new charges will come in as the contractor “surprisingly” finds issues nobody knew was there. These are called “change orders” and it’s the oldest trick in the book to grab more money from a government that is now trapped.

Since there will be no turning back at that point, the City will pay all that shit too. I’ll guess it’s another $100,000 at a minimum.

Hostess House “Minor Repairs” Now at 10x Original Inflated Budget.

At the last council meeting, council members FINALLY put up a fight over what looks to be excessive costs. When Reliance Architecture said it would cost $38,000 to re-shuffle some paperwork, council actually put up a fight.

It was nice to see. We certainly NEVER saw that type of thing during the Talbert and Monroe years. The last time I recall seeing serious pushback on costs was when the Old City Hall remodel project was budgeted at $350,000 and the bids came in at $750,000. Of course, they proceeded to spend $1.5 million on it before it was all said and done.

The Hostess House has followed a similar trajectory – as I predicted at the very beginning in March of 2021….

From March 12, 2021 Dispatch article

When computing things using FinleyMath, you ALWAYS have to add a zero at the end. Like owning a boat. That $3 bracket for your home ends up costing $30 at the marine depot! It has happened over and over and over again. Thus, $200,000 becomes $2,000,000:

From August 8, 2023 Dispatch article

I hate to say it, but after I win the $1.5 billion Mega Millions tonight, I STILL will not donate $2 million to this project, because it seems like such a ripoff. The City THEMSELVES admit that this venue will only make about $10,000 per year in rental fees after subtracting costs. So the payback period is 200 years. Absolutely retarded.

Throw in the fact that Mike Hardin has ALREADY completed a “possible wedding/reception” over at the old Santa Fe Depot, and you have a lot of supply on the market for this purpose. As usual, the City should have stayed out of it and let the free market do its job.

New Budget Admits Hostess House Revenue Will Only Be $10,450 Per Year.

First, City council took over the Hostess House three years ago and told us it needed some “minor repairs”:

Then Finley told us the budget for the project “is about $200,000”

Council picks architecture firm for Hostess House upgrades

THEN the brain trust of Kuehne, Talbert and Williamson got ahold of it, and they decided to blow about $1.4 MILLION on the project.

According to the new budget [see page 1], Hostess House revenues for the next fiscal year will be $16,000 and expenditures will be $5,550.

That leaves about $10,000 left over as “profit”. Pretty close to the $12,000 I have been using for a while now.

At $10,450 per year, it will only take the City about 140 years to get their ‘investment’ back.

Of course, compared to the Business Pork project (expenditures over $7,100,000 and revenues of $0) this looks like a huge winner!