The City foolishly took over the Hostess House at the end of 2019, you may recall. Apparently, they think they should be in the business of running an event center instead of just leaving that to the private sector.
They apparently also learned ZERO from the $1.5 million they wasted on the Old City Hall “remodel”.
Immediately after taking over, council approved the expenditure of $5,850 to replace a 5-ton HVAC unit [Dispatch 11/19/19 front page news].
According to then-councilman Mike White: “The Hostess House has had extensive air-conditioning problems, and he alluded to multiple service calls in recent years.“
Great. Fine and dandy. I covered that story myself and laughed at TJ Monroe worrying about a few hundred bucks after she had voted repeatedly to waste tens of thousands on other moronic projects.
Here we are about a year later. The City managed to make about $1200 renting this thing out in 2020. Yes, that’s an entire twelve hundred bucks. I requested the rental sheet for 2020.
Clearly, it was a rousing success! So what is City council to do after taking on this idiotic project they never should have touched? Why, go and spend another $300,000 remodeling the building, naturally! A building which everyone NOW apparently sees as a dilapidated piece of shit. Council had Hendrix Engineering come in and do a major assessment of the Hostess House recently.
[Of course, one might ask why they didn’t do all this BEFORE they took it over, but that’s City council for you. Leap first and look later.]
So what did Hendrix find? You can see all the details HERE [page 26, 27, 28].
One of the interesting tidbits is the talk about the HVAC system:
Mechanical, HVAC – item #3 (page 26): Currently systems appear to be functioning but are nearing end of life cycle.
Very weird. They literally just replaced the HVAC 15 months ago, but it is now nearing end of life cycle?
I see that “nearing end of life cycle” phrase a LOT in the minutes over the years. It’s an easy way to get new stuff they want even if the old stuff is perfectly fine. It’s safe to pull this stunt, because what kind of asshole is going to comb through thousands of purchase orders over 60 or 80 months to try and find out when the original equipment was ACTUALLY purchased??
An asshole like me, that’s who.
I saw this phrase most recently after the IT Department allowed hackers to lock up the entire City computer system and ruined approximately $40,000 worth of computer equipment. Finley glossed this over by explaining to us that all that stuff was old anyways (“end of life”) and was going to be replaced soon. So, no big deal.
Seriously. This is how “logic” works in the government sector and in the minds of government bureaucrats who have never worked in the real world. It’s sad, and it always costs the taxpayer a pretty penny.
Here is an idea! If this Hostess House project is SUCH a great use of funds and there is SUCH a high demand for it, why don’t all the Goldfish and Finley get together, open their own wallets, buy the fucking thing, fix it up and rent it out themselves?
Should be a no-brainer, right???
I think council member Cathy Kuehne ESPECIALLY should jump in on my idea! After all – she was quoted in the Dispatch as saying “the city should work to keep the historical integrity of the building, even if it costs a little more.“
Sure, why not? It’s the taxpayers dollars! Not Kuehne’s. So she is all for blowing more dough on the idea. Maybe she and her husband can take some of the roughly $115,000 in salary they are paid by the Lampasas school district and buy the Hostess House! I’d love to see it.