Marble Falls – The Original Lampasshole

Marble Falls ALSO Has No IT Department.

Marble Falls – which is right down the street and has a similar population – ALSO has no IT department. According to Kaleb Kraenzel, the Assistant City Manager: “currently, our organization contracts out with a local company for that service”.

That makes TEN cities our size I have checked with and ZERO IT Departments. That’s 0-10 on IT Departments….not a very good batting average, even for government work. The facts look worse for Monica and Kristy every time I get a response from another city manager.

Marble Falls takes in about FIVE TIMES the money we do in sales tax ($150k per month versus $750k), so there is clearly more money sloshing around there….yet STILL no IT department.

I asked Mr Kraenzel how much they spend on their IT contract and am waiting to hear back.

Hell, even Copperas Cove, which is around FIVE TIMES our population, only spends about $380,000 on their IT. Five times larger yet they spend roughly what we do? Very odd.

Clearly, we are overstaffed. I’m going to call the Lampasas IT Department the Department of Redundancy Department from now on. Monica has been feathering her nest for almost 14 years now. Perhaps it is time for a change.

But…But…But…Marble Falls Has One!!!

I have opined previously on how ridiculous it is to try and match Marble Falls when it comes to expenditures [such as Christmas decorations] and paying our government workers [like city managers]. Marble Falls may be close to us in population, but there is about FIVE TIMES as much money sloshing around there. [I calculate this by noting that Lampasas sales tax revenue is around $120,000 to $150,000 per month whereas Marble Falls gets a check for more like $750,000 to $800,000 per month – that is a HUGE difference].

I think we all know this on a gut level. After all, they have not only a Wal-Mart but also a Home Depot AND a Lowes!! Their cup definitely runneth over.

But there is ONE thing we should have tried to copy Marble Falls on and didn’t – and that is their city council chambers. As you see below, it is quite modest…about 30 chairs, a big TV on one wall and a medium sized room.

What did OUR city do when they got this “city council chambers vanity project” in their heads? Sent Monica Wright out to view the city council chambers of Dallas, Austin and Round Rock to “look for ideas”.

Yes, I’m serious. I have that on very good authority.

Dallas and Austin are two of the biggest cities in the entire country and Round Rock is about 20 times bigger than we are. Yeah – makes total sense we would try and copy them – and spend several days driving around to ogle them! Maybe that’s where they got the idea to throw away our puny and embarrassing $34,000 A/V system bid and instead blow almost $100,000 on the “Ferrari of A/V systems” in a chamber with SEVEN TV sets.

In your face Marble Falls!

One of Finley’s talking points to justify this huge expenditure is that city council “needed more room”…but I’m wondering why? When I read every single council minutes for the last 4.5 years, there were rarely more than 20 city employees mentioned as being present. Call it 25, tops….and THAT was rare. Usually it’s more like 12 or 15.

So the “twice the size” new chambers and the “100 stackable chairs for $12,800” must be for all those concerned citizens who show up at the meetings every week, right?

Not exactly.

When a certain city council member was yelling at me that “all you do is bitch and moan like everyone else, but you never come to a meeting”

I then said “so not a lot of people come to the meetings, eh? Like how many show up? Three? Five?”

He said…and I quote…”If we’re lucky”. Having just walked him right into my trap, I asked “if nobody goes, then why do we need this fancy-pants, top-of-the-line, overkill A/V system with $8,600 worth of huge TVs costing almost $100,000.00?”

Bam. No answer for that one.

If Marble Falls tried to match US and blow a ton of money on a brand new city hall and council chambers, they would have to spend almost $8 million dollars and have 30 TV sets for it to be proportionately ridiculous. I’m pretty sure the citizens of Marble Falls would grab their pitchforks and torches and toss a few morons off that big bridge of theirs if they pissed away that kind of dough. And rightfully so.

The Twisted Logic of Councilman Mike White

During a 30 minute phone call (screaming match) with Mike White last month over the $100,000.00 Azbell Electronics debacle, other issues came up. Like how overpaid our city employees are and how they seem to get an automatic raise every single year, when those of us in the private sector (who pay their bloated salaries) do not.

Now, before I begin shitting on heads, I’ll say I’ve always considered Mike to be one of the sane voices on city council. He actually runs a successful business and understands the value of a dollar. Thus, he is always voting NO to the plethora of moronic ideas coming out of that group. Hopefully he will vote NO on the latest idiotic idea of a city recycling program, but I digress.

When I was bitching about the fact that we spend a LOT of money on a city manager AND and ASSISTANT city manager, he started laying into me that “we need to pay a lot because if we don’t, the city down the street will!!”. I heard this same bullshit argument when I complained about the massive amount of money being spent on Christmas lights a few years ago. The explanation I got was “they spend a lot more than that in Marble Falls!”

I don’t care what they spend on Christmas lights in Marble Falls. Nor do I care what they pay their policemen or firemen or their city manager. Lampasas is not Marble Falls. Not even close. So to justify bloated salaries because “Marble Falls does it,” is the height of idiocy.

The cost of living is much lower in Lampasas and the employment opportunities are much worse. Ergo, you pay what you need to attract a person who can do the job – not what Marble Falls is paying for that job.

Here is your proof:

Cost of living and employment opportunities in Lampasas

versus

Cost of living and employment opportunities in Marble Falls

The average person in Lampasas earns about $27,000 per year and 21% of the city lives below the poverty line. There is no excuse for paying city “workers” $70,000 or $100,000 per year. Many of these “workers”, like Monica Wright, would be scanning groceries at HEB for $25,000 per year if she wasn’t “working” at city hall.

But wait!! It gets worse!

Because when a city “worker” says they ‘only’ make $45,000 per year, they are conveniently leaving out all the benefits. The city also pays their health insurance, which can be up to $15,000 per year. They also put away another $15,000 or so for their pension! So they are not costing the taxpayer $45,000 per year. They are costing us more like $75,000 per year. All to sit on ass in an air-conditioned office and tell people like me, by email, to buzz off when I ask too many questions. Great work if you can find it! Who do I fellate for that job??

But that’s not enough. They think they should get a 2% raise every single year. This goes along with their overtime pay, “longevity pay” (yes, they get paid a bonus just for being there a long time), and weeks of paid vacation. Add it all up, and a lot of these clowns are making over $50 for every hour of ‘work’ they spend dicking around on their computers.

*NOTE*: All of the above guesstimates of employee cost are taken from the city budget. Of course, they refuse to tell me what anybody actually makes so I have to deduce these numbers from the budget. I DO know that a year or two ago, they wanted a 1% bonus, which a city council member said would cost the taxpayers another $60,000 – which means the city employee total employee salary number was somewhere in the area of $6,000,000.00 per year. That’s SIX MILLION. How many employees does that cover? No idea. They refuse to say.