I have to. Not just that outlandish neon-green-colored X but the entire “narrative” behind spending $15,000 on three letters in a parking lot: that tourists will flock here to take a picture on it and then hang around downtown to empty their wallets. It’s just too absurd to take seriously.
If they had just squandered $15k and tossed it up one day, I probably wouldn’t even notice or say a word. But this insistence that this is a tourist attraction can’t be ignored. It’s not. It never will be.
Mandy was very busy yesterday wearing out her # key on her keyboard and encouraging local Lampassholes “make your way downtown for some shopping, delicious eats & now some fun photo ops!”
That’s all well and good. I’m sure a few dozen of Mandy’s cheerleaders and friends of Misti/Delana/Kathy will head down there and dutifully comply. They’ll have a glass of wine, get tipsy and zany and take a photo on the letters. Then in a few weeks, all the hubbub will die down and it will sit there forevermore getting shat on by pigeons and vandalized at 2am by moron Lampassholes on methamphetamine. Then eventually a five-year-old child will climb that T, fall and crack their heads open and sue Finley for $500k. THAT’S the Lampasas way!
Also, having Friends of Mandy/Misti come down and spend money isn’t really the purpose of this neon-green contraption, is it? Since HOT (Hotel Occupancy Tax) funds were used for this, it is TECHNICALLY to attract OUTSIDE wallets and “put heads in beds”. I’d much rather see HOT funds used for things that ACTUALLY attract outside people like, say, Spring Ho or something.
But whatever. In the grand scheme of things the $15,000 they wasted on this is spit in the ocean compared to the LITERALLY MILLIONS OF DOLLARS they have wasted on other useless stuff – like the $1.5 million City council chambers and the $96,000 City council A/V system and the multi-million dollar corpse repository ‘business park’.
Oh, and they still can’t bother to offer anything above minimum wage to local kids working as lifeguards at the pool this summer. Definitely no money for that!! Clearly, money is way too tight – so, no pool for you!!
Boy, the Lampasas Economic Dunces Club (LEDC) has sure been hard at ‘work’ recently! You can bet that Mandy Walsh is still costing the taxpayer $100,000 per year despite there being no economic activity to “develop” or “direct”! They’ve been SO busy, in fact, that they didn’t bother to hold a March meeting! Therefore, the latest info we have on their wheel spinning are the minutes from January 15th! Three full months ago!
They usually hold their meetings in the new $1.5 million Fishbowl BUT they NEVER BOTHER to use the $96,000 A/V system to record their meetings – despite the fact that they handle mishandle hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Apparently they WILL actually meet next Wednesday but it will be by teleconference. So I’m guessing it will all be shrouded in even more secrecy than normal.
(Seems to me they should take a page out of City council’s book and live stream on YouTube – you know, maybe use that $96,000 A/V monstrosity more than 3 hours per month!)
[If you are a new reader, you can get a taste of the LEDC profligate ways HERE and HERE]
I’d love to know if they are STILL going to pay Pope Eckermann The Engineer $100,000 to further ‘develop’ the already ‘shovel-ready’ business park….seeing as how the economy is now cratering and will likely be toast for they next year and a half at LEAST. Even the LEDC can’t be stupid enough to think anyone is going to show up to that weed patch any time soon with “high-paying jobs”. LOL.
But they now have something almost as good! Three giant metal letters – LTX! I’ll pause while you all gasp in admiration over such a brilliant and original idea (I think Mandy picked it up at one of her many $5,000 three-day seminars she seems to attend monthly to get ideas to “revitalize” the downtown area).
THIS will bring the tourists in from Austin and Dallas!!
Anyways, the ORIGINAL idea was to use the $7,500 “prize” that was “won” by our City Council Karaoke Team (I’ll get to that at the end of the article**) to pay for these three letters.
Alas, as is typical in government the final cost was closer to $15,000 (see pages 26 and 27)….and City council voted to loot one of their slush funds (the HOT fund – Hotel Occupancy Tax) to make up the difference.
I guess the theory is throngs of tourists will swarm here from ALL OVER Texas to get their picture taken with the LTX metal sign. They will then spend a few hundred thousand dollars at Eve’s Cafe (which I love, btw) and maybe one of those trinket shops. The state will THEN collect their sales tax and THEN they will send THAT back to Lampasas where it will stuff our coffers and we will actually MAKE money! Meanwhile the tourists will look at the photo a month later and wonder what the “L” stands for in LTX.
I calculate they should break even on the endeavor around August of 2047.
HOW THE MONEY WAS ‘WON’**
In October of 2018 and again in 2019, part of City council traveled (as usual) to the useless and expensive Texas Municipal League conference and ‘won’ a karaoke prize offered by Waste Connections. They ‘won’ $5,000 in 2018 and $2,500 last fall.
In what I assume is a complete and utter coincidence, Waste Connections’ trash hauling contract was JUST up for renewal a month or two ago. City council voted to renew this contract without seeking competing bids. Finley intimated it was just too much hassle to go out and get a bid from another trash hauler. Never mind that they did EXACTLY THAT three years ago [3/3/17 Dispatch – front page], which is how they ended up switching to Waste Connections in the FIRST PLACE…but I digress.
Toups, Talbert, and Kuehne – the ‘winners’ of the ‘prize’ – all sit on City council and voted YES on this decision. The contract, by the way, is worthroughly FIVE AND A HALF MILLION DOLLARS ($5,500,000.00)
I’m not accusing anyone of hanky panky or quid pro quo…just reporting the facts and observing incidents that happened fairly coincidentally. I leave it up to the reader to form their own opinions.
I will say this – whoever came up with this ‘prize’ idea over at Waste Connections is a complete genius: spend $7,500 and then get $5,500,000.00 contract.
So – just to sum up the series of events for those on the short bus and the IT Department:
‘Winners’ pledge to spend that $7,500 buying big metal letters LTX
Big metal letters actually end up costing almost $15,000
HOT fund raided to make up difference
Waste Connections awarded $5.5 MILLION trash contract without seeking bids
**UPDATE** – Here is a weird nugget: In the January 27, 2017 Dispatch [page 11] then-council-member Misti Talbert said the following about switching from Waste Management to Waste Connections: “City council is not unhappy with Waste Management but wants to see if it is possible to save money on trash collection”
Ahhhh….so back THEN it was worth it to check around for a better price just for the hell of it. But NOW, after winning a bribe prize from Waste Connections, you are perfectly happy NOT to bother looking around for a better price. Got it.
These politicians and bureaucrats are SO selfless, they ONLY spent an extra $295 on a vanity plate for the LTX sculpture too! Of course, no mention that the letters cost almost TWICE the amount of the bribe prize they took won from Waste Connections. Perhaps they should have added “Taxpayer” or “HOT Fund” to the vanity plate as well?
