IT Department – The Original Lampasshole

How Our Bloated IT Department Spends Their Time

Time for a deep dive into what our $426,000 Information Technology Department does all month.

When IT Director Monica Wright submits her monthly reports, we are treated to a ticket count. Every time something happens over there, a ticket is generated and that task is then completed by either Monica Wright (Department head with no network credentials) or Kristy Acevedo, the network administrator.

[Yes, TSM Consulting does a LOT of the “network administrator” job, but we’ll get to that later].

The ticket count looks large and impressive. Like Ron Jeremy in ultra HD on a 70-inch TV, perhaps. But are they REALLY doing that much work? I was curious.

I recently requested a list of all tickets generated in September of 2021. Boy, was it an eye-opener. Especially since City council just agreed to give the IT Department ANOTHER $90,000 over last year’s budget to hire ANOTHER IT person! They must be super busy over there, right? They generated FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIX tickets in September!

Wow. That’s a lot! That’s like 14 tickets every single day, including weekends! Such busy little bees they are!

Or is something else going on here? Each ticket shows a category (email, backups, hardware problem, etc) and a time stamp. With this, I was able to draw some conclusions.

Here is my breakdown of categories so far (I will break this down further as I have time):

Unspecified or left blank: 68 tickets (16%) had either no information on the category or said “unspecified”. So we literally have no record or idea of what they were doing on 16% of these tickets.

**Acevedo managed to generate 9 tickets (2% of monthly total) instantaneously at 6:25pm doing [?]. Considering this was after hours, likely an automated event. We will never know.**

Backups: 157 tickets (37%). One thing I noticed immediately is there were quite a few tickets generated in the wee hours of the morning, when there is no way in hell anybody was working. These are almost exclusively “backups” and they are clearly generated automatically. Maybe they call that “working” in the government sector, but not in the real world.

Can you imagine telling your boss you worked all night when you were REALLY asleep and then pointing to your ice maker which made cubes all night automatically and saying “see! Look what I did!”

**Definition of “Nerf job” = automatic backups every evening at 4:30pm**

So a whopping 1/3 of all their “work” is backups and a goodly portion of that takes place in the middle of the night. Another big chunk of those happen at the end of the day. Many times, I saw 10 or 12 tickets generated between 4:30pm and 4:45pm. In other words, sitting there at the end of the day and watching the machines backup data. Ain’t government work grand?

So we can already see that 53% of the tickets (255 out of 426) we either have no idea what they were doing OR the ticket was just noting an automated backup of data – many times in the middle of the night.

Ouch. We’re now down to 171 tickets for the month – between TWO people. Not so impressive anymore. Less than 3 tickets per worker per day, if you include weekends (we’ll get to that too).

A/V System: 16 tickets (3.7%). This mainly happened on days where a City council meeting was going to take place that night (twice a month). Monica managed to milk 12 tickets in 13 minutes for “A/V System”. Then as you can see, everyone took a nice, long siesta until the automated backups started at 4:30pm:

Facebook/Twitter/Website: 13 tickets (3%). I assume this is going to the City website and updating something – like a job opening or announcement. Super hard work.

Printer toner: 4 tickets (<1%): I made jokes over the last three years about Monica going around changing printer cartridges. It appears to be partially true. Hard to believe that a grown adult as head of another department (City Hall, Library) can’t change printer ink themselves, but apparently that’s the case.

We are now up to 288 tickets in the “pretty much a joke and anyone with a pulse can do it” category. That’s 67% so far – or 2/3 of their “work” for the month.

Continuing on….

Antivirus, cybersecurity, firewall, malware: 19 tickets (4.5%). OK, now we’re talking! Good to see they spend 4.5% of their time on the combo of antivirus (10 tickets), cybersecurity (7 tickets), firewall (1 ticket) and malware/worm (1 ticket). Of course, this is AFTER they allowed ransomware onto the system a couple years ago resulting in the destruction of roughly $40,000 in City computer equipment.

Did I mention that some of the “antivirus” work took place in the middle of the night? It did. More automation masquerading as “work” (making the ice cubes!):

The kicker? The IT Department ALSO paid our old friends TSM Consulting $7,631 last month for “Panda antivirus”! Like I have said a million times before, we ALREADY HAVE three people in the IT department: Wright, Acevedo and TSM Consulting, who makes tens of thousands of dollars per year to do the work our IT Department is incapable of doing.

Police Department: 61 tickets (14%). Not a surprise. The police department has a lot of equipment, body cams, mobile laptops, printers, etc. Of these 61 tickets, however, 20 of the tickets were “backup” events – and thus automated and already counted above in the “backups” category. The other 41 tickets (9.6% of total for the month) were things like software problems, software install, printer install, etc.

HOWEVER, don’t forget: two years ago (immediately after the ransomware fuckup by the IT Department) the police department took a LOT of responsibility OUT of the hands of the IT Department! They have spent over $28,000 with WatchGuard to store all body cam footage since then – and will continue to spend $10,620 per year for this service going forward [page 10, column 4, paragraph 2 onwards]

So, everything to do with bodycam recording, storage, backups and data manipulation SHOULD be taken care of by this $10,620 per year contract. Ergo, the IT Department presence over there should be limited to very basic events like printer installation and other small problems – NOT the job of backing up or dealing with bodycam data.

Now we get to the meat and potatoes. The following is the stuff you probably think of when you think of what the IT Department spends all day doing. It amounts to 44 tickets total – or only 10% of their recorded tasks.

Software install (4), software config (7), software problem (14), software update (9): 34 tickets total (8%). Of these 34 tickets, Acevedo handled 29 of them – or 85%. This reinforces my view that Acevedo is the only one with rudimentary computer knowledge in the “department”.

Of course, it could ALSO be due to the fact that Monica didn’t appear on ANY tickets between the 17th and the 22nd. No doubt on one of her MANY vacations. She DOES get 4 weeks vacation AND 2.5 weeks of sick/personal days every year.

Hardware install (2), hardware config (1), hardware problem (7): 10 tickets total (2.3%). Of these 10 tickets, Acevedo handled 9 of them. This also reinforces my suspicions that Monica doesn’t really get her hands dirty. She costs the taxpayers six figures because (1) she has been there forever (2) holds a title, no matter how undeserved (3) good at looking busy and generating tickets that actually don’t accomplish much.

The final kicker?? Despite it appearing (from the tickets) that Wright and Acevedo take care of “antivirus”, they actually paid our old friends TSM Consulting $7,631 last month for “Panda antivirus”.

More Overpaid Parasites

Yet more documentation that MANY state and local government employees continue to help themselves at the expense of the people with productive jobs.

Link to article below, but here is an excerpt:

Last year, we found 1.7 million public employees earned $100,000 or more. The vast majority – 1.3 million six-figure earners – worked at the state and local levels. There were 105,000 local and state government employees out-earning every governor of the 50 states at a salary of $190,000 or more.

In Texas, 356 municipal employees made more than all governors ($190,000). Some of these towns are small, like Stanton (pop. 2,900), where the manager earned $314,696. In Whitesboro (pop. 4,000) and Manvel (pop. 10,000), the administrators were paid $312,000 and $292,529, respectively.

In Florida, the city attorney of the seaside community Dania Beach, Florida (pop. 32,000) gleaned $436,917 – that’s more than any U.S. president. At the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, eight police officers and detectives made between $300,000 and $783,000 last year.

Nearly 10,000 employees of the University of California system pulled down more than $200,000. This includes 65 highly compensated public employees who made between $1 million and $3.6 million.

Link to original article HERE.

Oh, and speaking of overpaid, arrogant government employees, I have to wonder which city employee had the cops called on their “princess” for drinking at a party at their house! Then supposedly called the cops wanting to know who tattled on their “princess”. Hmmmm….I wonder who that could have been….an arrogant city employee with a teenage daughter….hmmmmm.

Now, I know kids will be kids. I was one myself. But if my parents caught me, they beat my ass. If I had been lucky enough to have a Mom who worked for the city and she got special treatment, well she would have STILL beat my ass and been thankful she had friends in high places. Only a truly arrogant person would actually demand to know who dropped the dime. Truly unbelievable arrogance and entitlement. Not surprising at all, if this is who I hear it is.

After Blowing $95,000 On Opulent NO-BID A/V System, City Decides Not To Use Video At All

After THREE City council meetings in the new Fishbowl and ZERO video records of said meetings, I finally just asked the City outright: “Are you aware of any plans to EVER have video recordings of council meetings? It was promised last year by [recently ~~fired~~ resigned Assistant City Manager] Gary Cox.”

The official response: At this present time, the City does not have any plans to video the Council meetings. If and when the decision is made to video the Council meetings, the videos will be made available on the City’s website.

You seriously can’t make up stuff like this. It’s almost as good as the LEDC promising “shovel-ready” sites in the Business Park four years ago and still having a useless weed patch today.

Just a quick reminder that not only did Gary Cox specifically promise video archives of the meetings, but thousands and thousands of dollars were spent on cameras and other devices to allow video recording of meetings and (later) live streaming.

Some expenses:

The City bought TWO Lumens VC-B30U PTZ cameras with RS232 controllers – those were $920 EACH = $1840

The City also bought a Matrox Monarch HD video streaming and recording appliance for $1,227 (NewEgg sells this same device for $995)

That alone is $3,000 worth of bells and whistles that the IT Department can’t figure out how to use. I have to assume that is the case: either simple incompetence or laziness. Why else would the City blow thousands on cameras and video streaming and recording and then NOT use it???

Of course, tens of thousands are wasted all the time in the IT Department and hundreds of thousands are wasted by the City in general. Three grand is spit in the ocean when it comes to City waste. But it just shows for the umpteenth time how wasteful and incompetent some parts of the City really are.

You would never catch Rickie Roy pissing away money like this in the Public Works Department. Never.

First Time Was Funny….Now It’s Just Sad

City Council met on November 12th for the second time in their new $1.5 million-dollar Fishbowl. I’d like to tell you that they finally got the fancy $95,000 no-bid Azbell Electronics video recording/archiving/streaming system to work this time, as was promised by recently ~~fired~~ resigned ACM Gary Cox well over a year ago. But, alas, it is not to be. Again.

You can hear the $95,000-quality audio recording here: https://www.lampasas.org/Archive.aspx?AMID=212

What’s the over/under on how many weeks it takes Monica to bite the bullet and call Azbell back out to re-teach her how to operate the Ferrari of A/V Systems? Go ahead, Monica. The $1,000 they charge you for the service won’t show up in the monthly list of “checks written for over $4,000″….so I probably won’t see it.

Or will I?

After all, it’s only been about a year since the system was installed and you were trained on it…and another 2 weeks since the last Council meeting. How could I possibly expect a City IT employee of 14 years to get things figured out THAT fast?

I should probably just “sit here for a minute and realize it was very worth it” to shell out $95,000 for an audio recorder and $8,600 worth of 70″ TV screens. Very, very worth it.

City Council Humor…And Crazy Math

Listening to the audio-only recording of the first City Council meeting in the new Fishbowl provided some laughs…even if I had to sit through 90 minutes of absolute agony to get there.

Link to audio: https://app.box.com/s/k7e9kao553yiyt4vgatpfhvx6igyk9gq

The humor (once again) concerns the horrible deal the City wants to make by moving the police department servers from in-house servers to cloud servers.

If you slide forward to the 1:29:25 mark, you will hear (barely – the audio is terrible – not worth $95,000) the explanation as to why the PD needs to make the move to cloud storage. We are told that “by OUTSOURCING our video to a cloud solution, it’s gonna eliminate some work that Monica and Kristy have to do to maintain, update and repair that server.” [1:31:10 mark]

Yes, we definitely don’t want to burden Monica and Kristy with “maintaining or repairing the servers!” That is only, like, their JOB and stuff. Christ, between TSM Consulting, Watchguard, Tyler Technologies and all the others we pay for IT work, the poor girls will have nothing to do but change printer cartridges and head out for an early lunch! Poor dears.

There’s that word OUTSOURCING again! Something I’ve been calling for all along. EVERY city I contacted that was close to our size in population OUTSOURCES their IT. So I’m all for outsourcing – but you ALSO have to get rid of our overpaid IT Department at the same time. Otherwise it makes no sense.

More ‘crazy math’ comes in when we are told they need about 9TB of storage which will cost $270 per month. Apparently storage cost is 3 cents per gigabyte per month – or 9,000 gigs times 3 cents = $270.

Which SOUNDS cheap. Until you go to NewEgg.com and see that you can BUY a 10TB drive for $200 – or 2 cents per gig.

I’m no computer expert and I’m sure that a PD video server and NewEgg external drives are not completely fungible (look it up, Monica) but my point is made: storage is CHEAP in the year 2019. We can BUY storage for TWO cents per gig and own it forever OR we can RENT storage for THREE cents per gig PER MONTH. That makes zero sense to me.

Zero sense, that is, unless the ultimate aim here is to relieve Kristy and Monica of the ‘burden’ of doing their jobs and securing data. Only then does it make a tiny bit of sense.

Another scary thing I noticed from this audio-only recording was how quickly The Seven Goldfish just unanimously vote for massive new expenditures on stuff like this after a 2-minute presentation. Zero research. Zero deep questions. No tabling it until next meeting so they can check on some claims or do some math or ask about other alternatives. Nope. Somebody asks for a big check, and the Goldfish throw tax dollars at it. Easy as that.

The same thing happened with our useless city recycling program. One dummy at a town hall meeting asked for it – and voila: we have a new $12,000 expenditure for something that does ZERO for the environment. It’s actually quite alarming how easily the Goldfish are duped into writing big checks.

Tyler Technologies, Incode Software and What REALLY Happened During Ransomware Attack – PART I

The City has been paying Tyler Technologies a tidy sum every year since at least 2014. Tyler provides Incode – which (as far as I can tell) is the software than runs all the utility payments for the city, among other things. Below are the amounts paid to Tyler since 2014 (as far back as I bothered to look – not sure how long they have been under contract):

2014 – $33,939.65
2015 – $35,540.42 (+4.70%)
2016 – $37,984.99 (+6.87%)
2017 – $39,820.80 (+4.83%)
2018 – $41,762.43 (+4.87%)
2019 – $43,816.63 (+4.92%) – this is AFTER Ransomware disaster!!
Average over five years: +5.82% per annum
2020 – $45,693.33 (+4.28%)
2021 – $47,463.11 (+3.9%)
2022 – available next month…my guess is it’ll be over $50,000

I am really in the wrong business. Only as a government contractor can you raise your prices by 5.8% like clockwork every year and nobody bats an eye. It’s not like this software runs on gasoline and the price of fuel went up 6%….or there are parts made of silver that wear out and need to be replaced. No, it’s a string of code with no moving parts…they just raise it because they can.

MAYBE they raise it because they have to pay their tech support guys more and more every year. Those people who are on the other end of the line when the sh!t hits the fan and Monica/Kristy calls up in a panic asking them to “remote in” to fix the ransomware disaster they are sitting in the middle of. That must be it, right? I mean, for over $40,000 per year, you MUST get SOME kind of customer service, right??

Not exactly.

I requested internal City Hall emails of Monica, Kristy, Finley and Gary covering the period from Aug 15th through mid-September…during the August 16th ransomware disaster (which I estimate has cost the City roughly $40,000 in new computer equipment). Those emails do NOT paint a pretty picture when it comes to Tyler Technologies. Yet, the City STILL renewed their contract AND got bent over for a 5% increase!! Such amazing negotiators over there at City Hall. No wonder developers are flocking to Lampasas with their candy bags and departing with $100k each!

Up next – copies of internal emails during The Great Ransomware Disaster of August 16th.

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.

Monica Can’t-Wright Requests $6,216.36 In Emergency Funds for Computers Ruined in Ransomware Attack

Apparently the “minimal impact” ransomware event wasn’t entirely minimal. The first casualty popped up in City Council packets (page 103): Monica needs $6,216.36 to replace some ruined computers.

Over $1,000 per computer? Seems high – I see nice computers on Amazon for $300 all the time. But after digging, I see some of that is also for some new monitors! Because computer viruses always ruin the monitors too, right Monica? Or maybe somebody is just using this debacle as an excuse to buy some fancy new monitors. I’d place my bets on the latter.

Must be awesome to work for the city IT Department: Blow hundreds of thousands per year on fancy equipment, take 8 or 9 weeks off every year, get almost $30,000 in benefits IN ADDITION to your bloated salary, leave the City network open to attack and STILL get to keep your job, nobody asks you a single question about how it happened and THEN you tell Spinley and The Seven Goldfish you need over $6,000 to buy some new stuff because you wrecked the old stuff.

Hell, $6,200 is spit in the ocean compared to a $185,000 bathroom – the Goldfish won’t even bat an eye.

Rest assured I have requested records on which department these computers were from, how old they were and what they originally cost. Maybe Jo-Christy Brown will deny me that information as well.

City Attorney Stonewalls My Request For Ransomware Attack Details.

Far from being questioned or chastised about the recent IT Department screw-up which left the City’s computers open to attack, Monica Can’t-Wright and her accomplice Kristy “The Joker” Acevedo were PRAISED for their “hard work during the ransomware attack”! Seriously – there were ZERO questions from City Council about how the attack happened or why the IT Department got caught with their pants down (Council minutes page 66).

Only in government work can you screw the pooch that hard and then get praise for helping to clean it up. In the private sector, you’d probably be looking for a new job. God forbid The Seven Goldfish ask a single question about the entire incident – they have already forgotten it entirely!

What exactly did Monica do to save the day? What were the “emergency protocols” the quick-thinking Monica implemented? The City won’t say! That’s right. After I requested a copy of these supposed “protocols” that Monica implemented, the City attorney, Jo-Christy Brown produced six pages of drivel (lots of billable hours!) in a letter to the Texas Attorney General’s office explaining to them why the City of Lampasas should be able to deny my request.

Of course, I know damn good and well there ARE no protocols. But Ms. Brown and the City of Lampasas are taking the ridiculous position that release of any of this data “might result in a ‘targeted attack’ towards any perceived vulnerabilities”.

So, if I were to ask the fire department any questions about how they respond to fires, they would deny my request in a tizzy because I might use that information to go and burn down some houses?? Absolutely ridiculous.

Just more of the same from the Talbert administration: screw it up then cover it up and tell the citizens to pound sand.

Copperas Cove Is Five Times Larger Than Lampasas…

…and has FOUR employees in their City Information Systems Department (page 32) yet Lampasas manages to spend JUST AS MUCH MONEY on IT ($374,000 versus $379,000).

Amazing. We have TWO ding dongs in our IT Department for a city of 7,500 citizens and manage to spend $374,000 (this year’s proposed budget).

Copperas Cove has a population of around 35,000 and an IT Department with FOUR employees, yet they spend almost the EXACT same amount.

So our IT Department costs us about FIFTY DOLLARS per citizen while Cove somehow manages to do the same job for about $11 per citizen. Cove is nearly FIVE TIMES more efficient with their tax dollars.

I never run out of ways to point out the enormous waste and incompetence of our City IT Department. Pretty sure Cove didn’t just get hacked in a cyber attack either. Just saying.

On a slightly related note, Cove spends $1.4 million per year on health insurance for their city employees – the EXACT same amount we spend despite having a (presumably) much smaller government. Put another way, every man woman and child in Lampasas kicks in $186 per year for City employee healthcare….and in Cove that number is $40. AGAIN, nearly FIVE TIMES more efficient with tax dollars.

Retirement costs follow a similar pattern: in Cove they spend $1.6 million on City worker pensions while we spend about $1.16 million. That works out to $154 per Lampasshole and only $45 per Cove citizen – or THREE times more efficient in Cove.

No matter how you slice it, the cost of Lampasas government on a per citizen basis is orders of magnitude greater than a town just 15 miles up the road. It is an absolute outrage and a testament to poor governance and poor management.