Tag: IT Department

Mark It Zero, Dude!

Zero.

That is how many computer “experts” and IT Directors and Network Administrators the town of Kaufman, TX currently employs.

Kaufman is yet another small town about our size…another three hour drive up the road. Their median income is about 15% higher than ours and they are slightly larger. All in all, a decent comparison. Seeing those numbers, you’d think they would probably spend as much or more on a “technology” department than Lampasas does. Wrong.

How can this be?? I emailed the Kaufman city manager, Mike Slye, and asked him this very question. His answer verbatim from my email inbox:

“Third-party contract for IT services”

Oh….you mean like how our IT Director Monica Wright calls TSM Consulting or Cardinal Tracking or some dude named Neil Caldwell to do her work for her because she is completely inept and possesses no network certifications at all…just like our SECOND technology clown Kristy Acevedo?? You mean like how the city hands TSM Consulting $1,800 per month, every month, year in and year out, to be on call for any networking problems?

Yeah, kinda like that…except they aren’t dumb enough to pay TWO bozos a six-figure sum to sit in a chair all day and make those calls, like we do. Somebody else probably spends 3 minutes making that call – like the assistant city manager or something.

In other words, we could jettison the two bozos (who have proven incapable in the first place) and cut out the middle-(wo)men and just have TSM Consulting do all the work they are probably doing anyways? What a novel idea.

PROS: This would save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars per year AND free up two new grocery baggers for HEB to hire.

CONS: Monica and Kristy get even more angry at me.

As you can see, this is a terrific trade-off for the average citizen taxpayer of Lampasas….and one we should all be willing to make.

Her Name Should Probably Be Monica Can’t-Wright

I have held back on some of the more embarrassing examples of Monica Wright’s ineptitude because they weren’t really germane (go look it up, Monica…..)

However, since she and her BFF (and underling) Kristy Acevedo decided to antagonize me and my guests in a bar recently, I think it’s fair to post them now.

The following is from an email Monica wrote on Jan 3, 2017 to Chris Atkinson (a Nolanville bureaucrat) regarding bids for the audio/visual system she would later hand to Azbell Electronics arbitrarily (ignoring the bidding process altogether). Remember, this is a grown, 40-something, supposedly-highly-educated IT Department Head communicating with the outside world:

Chris, I wanted to reach out to you regarding the vm that you left me regarding A/V. I am currently working on our first big A/V project for our new City Council Chambers. I have not went out for bid for it yet, however I do have a vendor that I have met with on several occasions that has provided me with great information as well as will be bidding the project. I don’t have much information for you right now being that we are still working on our scope for this project.

If you would like, I can forward his information to you. I’m sure he would be happy to talk to you about your project/needs.

Broadcast Works – Adam Comer – North Texas Area Manager – 903-509-2470 x106 broadcastworks.com

Besides the atrocious grammar unbecoming of even a fourth-grade hillbilly, this is also even MORE proof that Broadcast Works was quite involved in the (supposedly) upcoming bidding process. Monica was clearly SO impressed by Broadcast Works (original A/V system bid of $34,000), she even sent THEIR company/contact information out for a recommendation to Nolanville City government….NOT the company information for Azbell Electronics (who was eventually handed a no-bid contract for almost $100,000 for the A/V system).

What a bargain the taxpayers get for $105,000 per year with Monica Wright-Like-A-Child: zero computer network skills, zero writing skills, zero make-up skills and only works 44 weeks per year!

Two Clowns and a Dwarf Walk Into a Bar…

…which sounds like the start of a bad joke. Unfortunately it turned into reality a few nights ago when our two obscenely overpaid and under-qualified City of Lampasas IT Department clowns (Monica Wright and Kristy Acevedo) drunkenly accosted me at a local watering hole. My first thought was “my god, they look a lot older in real life…and how long does it take to spackle on that much clown makeup?”

Related image

Yes, I guess the gloves have to come off now, if you are going to drunkenly antagonize me and my guests in my private life. That includes you, Jack Harrell.

The spackled clowns slurred a bunch of incoherent half-thoughts at me, despite me repeatedly asking them to leave me and my guests alone and stop embarrassing themselves. I couldn’t make out most of it through the slurring and layers of makeup but it was something about posting their “private” information on a blog like this (?) I’m not sure. Most of it sounded like mosquitoes buzzing or maybe two old crows squawking as they fight over a McDonald’s french fry in the parking lot.

Either way I have a newsflash gals: everything you do for the city and/or post on Facebook is PUBLIC information. That includes your ridiculously generous salaries, your lack of network certifications, the low number of hours you actually work, the fact you signed off on a no-bid $95,000 monstrosity A/V system, the fact you hire TSM Consulting to do networking jobs FOR you at great expense to the taxpayer. All of it.

I was kind of surprised they kept pestering me so overtly since there are cameras all over the place in the bar and it is very clear who is pestering whom from the video recordings. After the sixth or seventh time I told them to buzz off, one clown’s boyfriend jumped in and stuck his stubby little finger in my face and did some more slurring about “don’t talk to my lady like that!” (?). I remember being momentarily confused because I was sitting on a bar stool and he was standing upright….yet his face was nearly level with mine as he yammered away.

Hey Jack? Just because your girlfriend is two inches taller than you and your hair fell out, don’t take it out on me. M’kay? I know it’s gotta be frustrating that no matter how many dumbbells you hoist, the tape measure will STILL read 5’8…just accept it and go hit the tanning bed or whatever it is you do all day. Cool? Thanks.

The circus is in town!

Apparently the clowns think I’m a big meanie for posting information that is readily available on the City of Lampasas website and easily requested by anyone and everyone, as it is public record and you are (over)paid by the taxpayer. Much like cockroaches, they would prefer to operate in the dark with nobody knowing what they do all day or how much it’s costing the taxpayer.

Stay tuned and grab some popcorn!!!

How Many Hours They Actually Put In

Since I started this whole journey with the Azbell Electronics no-bid $94,000 “Ferrari of A/V systems” contract in the IT Department, I thought it fitting to start there when it comes to ACTUAL hours worked.

After requesting a “payroll history report” for a certain IT Department head, I came up with the following. Remember, there are 26 pay periods of 80 hours each (40 hours per week for two weeks). Fifty-two weeks times 40 hours yields 2080 hours as the maximum. Of course, very few people work a 40 hour week for all 52 weeks of the year (except tons of small-business owners, but whatever).

We’ll assume two weeks vacation and some sick days thrown in there. So the normal private-sector worker probably works about 1950 hours per year, maybe. Here are the number of hours worked per year for the IT Department head:

2013 1827.5 hours (equivalent to over 6 weeks vacation)

2014 1798.5 hours (equivalent to over 7 weeks vacation)

2015 1730.5 hours (equivalent to 8.7 weeks vacation – well over 2 months)

2016 1711.5 hours (equivalent to 9.2 weeks vacation – 2 months plus a week)

2017 1736.5 hours (equivalent to 8.5 weeks vacation – two months)

2018 1725 hours (equivalent to 8.8 weeks vacation – well over two months)

So over just those 6 years, we see about 48 weeks off of work – or nearly a year! Work 5 full years – take almost a year off….fully paid, of course.

Or put differently, if an employee costs the taxpayer $110,000 per year but only puts in 1725 hours of “work”, it is costing the taxpayer almost $64 per hour of “work”.

This also doesn’t take into account the $1800 per month the City pays TSM Consulting to be on call for all the network issues that TWO City IT employees aren’t capable of doing. Nor does it count the thousands of dollars to Cardinal Tracking Inc. or random guys named Neil Cardwell. Nor does it count all the other chunks of money like the “appreciation pay” she gets at Christmas or the “longevity pay” she gets for X number of years polishing a seat with her rear end.

So not only is the pay FAR higher than the private sector…the hours are far less too! Gotta love it. The question remains: will Misti “Drunken Sailor” Talbert have the guts to freeze or even cut salaries this year? Or will they do what they always do…spend, spend, spend?

City Paying Three Times To Do One IT Job

I’m sure you have all gotten your property tax bills by now!  Happy?  You’ll be REALLY happy when you read yet another chapter of waste in the IT Department!

I just love picking up stacks of records from City Hall.  Love it.  It’s like Christmas in October.  Today, I was handed a nice big pile of copies (for only $151.60) pertaining to IT Department expenses under the heading “Professional Services” [budget line 505-5395].  As I have pointed out recently, in addition to our two highly paid IT ‘experts’, the IT department farms out a lot of work to “professionals” who then do the work that our ‘experts’ are unable or unwilling to do.  One of these “Professional Services” is TSM Consulting….and boy, do they make some easy money!

I was hoping that these copies of the TSM bills would provide SOME KIND of description of what EXACTLY the city is getting for their $1,800 per month.  Nope.  Nearly every single page looks like this:

Just month, after month, after month (for YEARS) of shelling out $1,800 to TSM Consulting…for “monthly network support”.  All initialed and approved by “MW”…seriously??  Her “Network Administrator” is supposed to be doing that stuff – it says so right in her job description:

Of course, neither our IT Director NOR our Network Administrator has a single certification from Cisco or Microsoft.  Most “experts” have their CCENT or CCNA or CCNP certifications.  Not our well-paid experts.  And why should they?  Just sit back and have the suckers taxpayers pay TSM Consulting $1,800 a month instead!  Presto! The city is paying three people to do one job!  And you wonder why your taxes go up every year.  Incredible.  Monica has been there THIRTEEN YEARS and does not posses an entry-level network certification.  Nor does her underling Kristy Acevedo.

Even worse, it appears that TSM Consulting gets paid $1,800 per month just to be on-call in case of a problem.  So they get paid to do nothing most of the time.  How do I know this?  Well, buried away in my pile of Christmas gifts was this – a nice double billing for Feb 29, 2016:

Yes, that’s right – in addition to the ‘normal’ $1,800 in free money paid to TSM in February 2016, it appears there was actually something for them to do.  Namely “remote support setup, network mapping, and internet and firewall troubleshooting” – and for THAT, we paid ANOTHER $2,000 on top of the $1,800 retainer!  Are you kidding me??  It also doesn’t even state how much time they spent on it!  Just “quantity 1” and “rate $2,000”.  Would be nice to see how many hours they actually spent on this.  Incredible!  Nobody knows how to burn money like the IT Department.

Worse yet, TSM isn’t the only one getting paid to do our IT Department’s jobs for them…CivicPlus, Cardinal Tracking and even some dude named Neil Cardwell are all on record as sending bills for IT work to “MW” over the years.  Here’s another one:

Server migration is just moving data from one server to another.  Kind of like I move damning financial photos from my phone to this blog – little did I know that was worth $150 an hour.  MW and her entire IT “department” didn’t know how to move data from one server to another??  Mind-boggling.

So, it appears the job description for IT Director is

  1. Show up to the office…post some Facebook crap on personal page
  2. Find a consultant to do anything harder than change a printer cartridge
  3. Sign “MW” after job is complete (complain during 2-hour lunch that you have hand cramps)
  4. Take three weeks paid vacation.
  5. Drive to Dallas.  Look at their City Council chambers.  Drive home.
  6. Go to a couple of City Council meetings and pick the “monthly website photo contest” winner.  Bat eyelashes at City Council.
  7. Throw away the competitive $34,000 A/V system bid.  Replace with $100,000 A/V system.
  8. Make sure you take all 10 sick days….you earned it.  Kinda.
  9. Collect fat check and year end “appreciation pay” from Finley, as soon as he takes break from setting $1,500,000.00 on fire over at Old City Hall.
  10. Annual get together with Finley, Gary and Kristy…create $500,000 money pile and jump around in it while laughing heartily at suckers taxpayers.
  11. Repeat for a few more years and then collect fat pension

Must be sweet!  Good thing there are thousands of suckers citizens out there paying that property tax bill every November!