incompetence – The Original Lampasshole

Monica Requested $6,216 To Replace Computer Equipment Ruined in Ransomware Attack…Ends Up Spending $9,539

In typical wasteful government fashion, the $6,216 IT Director Monica Can’t-Wright requested last month in emergency expenditures to replace equipment ruined in the Aug 16th ransomware attack has mysteriously morphed into $9,539 instead. A hefty 53% jump [page 39 – check #153230]

I suspect since this all happened right at the end of the fiscal year, she just did what all department heads do in government: use it or lose it. She pulled a similar stunt previously to “use up” funds at the end of the year buying furniture for a council chambers that was still three years from being completed.

The most sickening part is a large portion of that $9,500 is for ‘replacement monitors’. I’m sorry, but computer viruses don’t ruin monitors. So it is likely everyone just wanted fancy new monitors and decided to spend ‘leftover’ budget money on them.

I see VERY nice 27” monitors on Amazon for a measly $150. That’s a hell of a lot of monitors you can buy for $5,000 or whatever portion of $9,500 you spent on monitors. Taxpaying saps like me are sitting here typing away on a lowly 21” monitor I have had for over 10 years while these clowns blow thousands on fancy new screens to replace ‘old’ ones that are perfectly good.

The wastefulness in the IT Department is truly nauseating. But I expect nothing less from a person who has never worked a day in the private sector and who would be bagging groceries if she hadn’t fallen ass-backwards into a cushy government job in a small town. A job for which she is clearly not qualified.

Of course, this new $9,500 number pushes up my grand total for the ransomware attack damage to just a hair under $40,000. I can’t wait for the November numbers so I can see how much money we had to pay Tyler Technologies to fix the ransomware attack for Monica. Should be epic.

Talbert Spouts a Lot of Hilarious B.S. to Justify Tax Increases

Well, Misti “Drunken Sailor” Talbert certainly has a sense of humor. This was evident with the ridiculous excuse she gave for increasing the tax rate 6.5% recently.

According to the Lampasas Dispatch, Talbert said “residents now receive a greater level of services than they did years ago, the last time the tax rate increased.”

I’ve been around here since 2011 – the last time the RATES were supposedly increased – and if there is a greater level of service since then, you sure sneaked it past me.

Unless by “services” you mean the service of taking huge piles of $100 bills from taxpayers/citizens and setting them on fire in a spectacular orgy of waste and incompetence.

You know – like the $1.5 million you blew remodeling Old City Hall, which was your signature vanity project. The waste included canceling a $34,000 A/V system that was properly bid on by Broadcast Works and instead blowing nearly $100,000 on a NO-BID A/V contract with Azbell Electronics.

That kind of service?

Or maybe the service she is referring to is taking the lowest bid of $96,000 for the Old City Hall elevator and throwing it in the trash bin and instead paying $126,000 for said elevator (which is currently 6 months past its installation date).

Maybe the “service” is blowing over $1,000,000.00 on a “Business Park” which remains an empty 165-acre weed patch used for nothing but dumping bodies?

A mayor who wastes six-figure and seven-figure sums over and over is not a mayor who is worried about money, obviously. Yet here we are a year later, and she is fine with jacking up property taxes over TWELVE PERCENT**….ready to blame the huge increase on “increased city services” instead of the piles of money wasted over the last few years on her pet projects.

** How do I get a 12% increase? Well, the average taxable value of a Lampasas residence increased over 6% last year – from $92,110 to $97,904…(must be all those newly-minted Corvive pyramid scheme millionaires in town bidding up mansions!!)

In fact, property VALUATIONS have been climbing ever since that same year of 2011 – a fact Talbert ignores when she tries to put lipstick on this pig by claiming RATES haven’t been raised since 2011. Tack on another 6.3% RATE increase on that increase valuation, and voila: over 12%.

While Talbert may be hilarious with her ridiculous explanations, in the end the joke is on the taxpayer who pays for her mistakes. As usual.

Timeline and Questions for Azbell $100,000.00 A/V Rip-off – PART I (Birth of a Bad Idea)

OK – so, I have spent about 48 hours reading through every single page of every city council minutes since January 1, 2013 (first available online) to try and piece together this Azbell debacle. That means I have probably spent about 45 more hours than city council has spent on this to date.

Here is a synopsis timeline and my comments in bracketed italics. I know some parts may make eyes glaze over, but PLEASE read it through – you will be shocked. The incompetence is stunning. I have also broken all this into six separate blog posts, so as to be digested easier.

Late 2013 and early 2014: City council gets a bug up their butt about needing new chambers. I have no idea why new chambers were supposedly needed, but approximately $350,000 was earmarked for the project. They hire an architect [JNW Architect at a cost of $35,000] and intermittently argue at council meetings over the rest of the year about whether this is a good use of funds.

AUGUST 24, 2014: Monica Wright returns to City Council with three bids for an audio/visual system [yes, this seems very premature since there aren’t even any plans yet, but this is par for the course…]

Broadcast Works $33,983.00
Azbell $41,184.00
Whitlock $54,411.36

Monica then recommends they go with Broadcast Works. Then-councilman Chris Toups moves to award the contract, and then-councilwoman (and current mayor) MISTI TALBERT seconds this motion. It is then unanimously approved (Mike White is present at this meeting and approves).

All well and good. Three bids were gotten, the lowest one wins, and the matter is settled. Or is it? [Why are they getting bids on an AV system before anything else is even decided on or planned out? It would be like, oh I don’t know, buying $13,000 worth of chairs before you even had a blueprint….]

MARCH 30, 2015: Special minutes show that two bids came in for the new council chambers project.

MW Hail Construction: $778,502
RKJ Construction $793,379

OOPS!!! These numbers are more than DOUBLE what they have budgeted!!

Council members stare, mouth agape and eyes boggling, and ask why it’s so much money? They also asked why the bids were not broken down more. Then deGraffenreid said he met with city attorney JC Brown, and she suggested NOT to meet with the contractors so there would be no hint of favoritism. She suggested the bids be rejected and scope of services revised – she would then meet with the contractors and find out why bids were so high.

Jennifer Walker (JNW Architects) said she and city manager Finley will meet and try to figure this out. She could not answer what drove the bid so high because the bids were not by component or broken down [Duuuhh…don’t ask me! I’m just the $35,000 architect!]

April 13, 2015: This is where things really go off the rails and the sh*t hits the fan and fingers get pointed. This is a good one, so read it all!

Apparently the big cost overrun is related to the base pad. If they take out the base pad, and have the city build it, they can save $100,000 – but many contractors won’t build on a pad built by the city [liability, I’m guessing] and city crews do not have experience building pads. Not to mention, it will take them away from their city jobs AND the project is STILL at least $250,000 over budget. Mike White [to his credit] says he does not like the idea of the City crews building the pad.

Mayor Grayson, and council members Toups and White stated they do not feel comfortable constructing a building if it will cost $700,000 [YAY! Fiscal sanity for a brief moment]

[This should have been the end of this disaster. They wanted something…they budgeted X dollars…the bids were twice that…so they can’t do it. End of story. Who kept this train wreck going? Who acted like 4-year-olds and said “I want I want I want I want”?]

Mayor Pro Tem Wanda Biershwale, Council members TJ Monroe, Chuck Williamson and Misti Talbert stated they would like to see new bids.

[Toups, White and Grayson clearly saw that this was a disaster-in-the-making and pushed against. More than a few times, Toups stated the city had better uses for this money. Monroe, Williamson, Talbert and Biershwale kept this disaster alive another day. Biershwale is now gone but the others STILL sit on council and Talbert is mayor].

So…who bungled this so badly? Finley’s name pops up a few times in the following discussion of “why is the cost double what we budgeted?”. Some ‘answers’ were fleshed out:

It is then stated that the City has already incurred the following expenses for this debacle:

$28,338 on furnishings [yes, they were buying furniture before they even had a plan done – including $12,780 on 100 stacking chairs, because “we needed to spend our year end funds”]

$33,983 for AV bid [this is the Broadcast Works bid from above, and the minutes EXPLICITLY use the words ‘expenses INCURRED‘ – so did they already hand Broadcast Works $33,983? Nothing would surprise me with this group]

$35,000 to JNW Architect, the geniuses in charge who didn’t think to get a cost analysis done first. Total clowns.

$7,313 for curbing and a pad for a generator

$5,596 for Geotechnical engineering survey

With $100,000 already burned in this dumpster fire, Council goes looking for an explanation and maybe an ass or two to kick….and more than a few fingers are pointed at Finley. To wit:

Council asks why the cost is double and why wasn’t a cost analysis done? Now Finley does a bit of backpedaling, as the minutes state “the budgeted amount was suggested by Finley as just ‘a starting point for planning’ [ah yes…we can’t stick to a budget, so we’ll say it was just a starting point].

Furthermore, JNW Architect “did not do a cost analysis because it was not part of their contract with the city” – sounds like Finley bungling, since I’m guessing he wrote the contract (?). Pretty big screw-up for a City Manager who has been doing this for at least 7 years.

Also, JNW Architect “designed the building by what the city wanted and not by what was budgeted” – say what??? This is a MASSIVE screw-up on either Finley’s part or the part of JNW. This is a HUGE miscommunication at best. Downright extreme incompetence at worst.

Was anyone taken to the woodshed over this? Did heads roll? Of course not. This is City Government and par for the course. So now Council decides they have three options going forward:

Terminate agreements and end project [this is what should have happened].
Change to a metal building to maybe reduce costs.
Re-budget and cough up the money to “keep the WOW! factor the city deserves” [yes, they ACTUALLY SAID THAT…it is in the minutes. Some of the people in charge of millions of dollars are making decisions on based on “wow” factors. Presumably as in “WOW, they are a bunch of morons to get ripped-off like that” or maybe “WOW! They must let the mentally retarded hold the purse strings in that city”]

Well…we all know they chose the worst option. I will continue in Part II later today or tomorrow.

Hold the Phones Chuck…Monica Wright DID Do Her Job Perfectly (in 2014) – Why Is She Covering for Morons Above Her?

I may owe Monica Wright a partial apology! I have spent DOZENS of hours reading every page of the City Council minutes starting in January of 2013 (which are the very first minutes available on the website) looking for clues to the current A/V debacle….and let me tell you – there are some real nuggets in there. Waste and incompetence on a colossal scale. We are not talking $30,000 or $60,000 here and there anymore. We are talking in the millions now (between City Council and LEDC waste). Millions that could have been used to lower property taxes or fix the streets or fix water mains or beautify the parks and creek areas. Oh boy. Where to start?

Let’s start with this crazy fact: in August of 2014, Monica Wright DID get three bids for an A/V system for the new council chambers. Here is the screen shot for August 25, 2014:

Monica went out and got three bids and then recommended the lowest price – which was NOT Azbell and was just under $34,000 including warranty and training. City councilman Toups then moved to approve, it was seconded by then-councilwoman MISTI TALBERT (current mayor) and with a unanimous vote, the motion carried. Also present at this vote were Mike White and Finley deGraffenreid – who still both hold the positions today that they held during that meeting. Which REALLY makes me wonder why everybody was playing stupid last month when I asked REPEATEDLY and PUBLICLY why we only got one bid on the current $100,000.00 Azbell contract. Did Finley and Misti and Mike all forget completely that there actually WERE three bids and the lowest was for $34,000? I highly doubt it.

I have to say, I feel VERY justified now when I went insane over the current $100,000.00 cost – you can see right here, that is almost TRIPLE what is/was considered reasonable. I will also publicly apologize to Monica Wright for dumping 100% of this debacle in her lap – but I wonder WHY she has refused to mention any of this from day one, when I politely requested a meeting with her to discuss this. She did her job correctly and found a good price back in 2014…so why the silence all this time?

Now a ton of questions emerge: how did this number TRIPLE so quickly? Why did city council play stupid when I asked if there were other bids, when they knew damn good and well they DID get three bids? Did they know that if they gave me those three bid numbers, they would look even more idiotic now since they are paying close to $100,000.00 this year?

Much more to come – including city council buying 100 “stacking chairs” for almost $13,000 for a council chambers building that hadn’t even gotten out of the planning stages yet (but yes, they got two bids on the chairs!). Why did they spend nearly $13,000 on chairs before the building was even built, a sane person might ask? Actual answer as printed in the minutes: to spend our year-end funds.

My god. Can you screw up any worse? Can you be WORSE stewards of public funds? I wonder where those 100 chairs are currently being stored and how much they are paying to store them. Incredible waste and stupidity on display.

Monica’s Melons

“Do not stoop to tie your laces in your neighbor’s melon patch” — Old Chinese proverb.

This was always one of my favorite sayings. Simple…clever…and requiring a tiny knowledge of melon growing. Do you understand the meaning? I’ll explain and simplify, so that even the ENTIRE Sullivan family can understand it.

It means, it is wise to avoid even the APPEARANCE of impropriety or theft. Maybe your shoe is untied…maybe it isn’t. Maybe you were about to steal the neighbor’s melon and maybe you weren’t. Perhaps it was an innocent shoelace tying…or maybe it was something more malicious, like melon theft.

(Even more simply, in deference to the Sullivans, melons grow on the ground, and it would require bending over to steal one).

Get it? You wait until AFTER you exit the melon patch to tie that shoe. That way, there are no misunderstandings or appearances of scum-baggery. For a tiny bit of effort (waiting a few minutes to tie the shoe), you avoid a big ugly mess of accusations.

It would also apply to, say, getting several bids on a $100,000.00 project to install a bunch of giant TVs and microphones and fancy iPads and stuff all over Lampasas city Council Chambers. By getting three different companies to COMPETE over a project, you insure that everything is (and looks!) above board. This COMPETITION is how you get the best price. Without it, you end up with something like the post office – terrible product and high price.

So…it makes me wonder why everyone in the city is digging their heels in on this thing. Monica could have picked up a phone and gotten two more bids…which costs the city zero. The downside to that is literally ZERO. The upside is that they may save $40,000. So why isn’t it being done?? The fact that they are all willing to go to the mat on such a horrible decision makes me wonder if melons are being stolen. Know what I mean? They are all doubling down and defending a terrible decision that is clearly wasting money for the city.

Maybe Azbell handed somebody an envelope full of cash…maybe they didn’t. Maybe people were promised their OWN 70′ TV from Azbell for their home…maybe they weren’t. There is no way to prove or disprove that and I’m just giving examples of how something that looks this bad might be construed- but it sure makes the imagination run wild….and it could all have been avoided by picking up the phone for two more bids. But they won’t. So why are they all choosing to “die on this hill” as it were?

Why not get two more bids? I’m still waiting for that answer. Especially from those who are hell-bent on attacking me and defending Monica and her melons.