So here are a few questions for Misti “Spend like a drunken sailor’ Talbert as she starts her second term as mayor:
Did you learn anything from the $1,500,000.00 Old City Hall renovation debacle? Are you proud that you backed it from the very beginning (“WOW factor!”) and supported it from start til finish? Or can you finally see it for the colossal waste that it was?
How about the part where Azbell Electronics won a $96,000 contract with no other bids…despite the fact you sat on city council the FIRST time the exact same contract was bid and awarded to Broadcast Works for $34,000?
Were there ANY repercussions when you found out city employees pulled the wool over your eyes on the Azbell contract? Did anyone get a stern talking to? Fired? Punished at all? I have posted internal city hall emails showing conclusively that Monica tried her best to keep Council in the dark and Gary Cox was very aware Azbell was FAR more expensive than other vendors. Or do you like being treated with such blatant disrespect?
Is it your opinion that the mayor and city council are the boss of Finley, or are you content that it seems to be the other way around?
Are you going to continue handing Eckermann Engineering hundreds of thousands of dollars in no-bid engineering work?
Are you cool with increasing the salary/benefits of your highest-paid city employees like Finley, Gary and Monica by 5% to 9% every single year? Do you have ANY plans to trim ANY government spending at all? Or is it 7% increases as far as the eye can see?
Do you think it might be a good idea to have at least ONE of your IT employees get qualified in network administration (by Microsoft, Cisco, etc), since they are costing the city hundreds of thousands in salary and benefits annually yet they spend another $30,000 or so per year to hire TSM Consulting to do the network jobs THEY should be capable of doing themselves? Monica Wright has been on the public teat for OVER THIRTEEN YEARS and has exactly ZERO certifications in network administration….which means she has to pay TSM consulting tens of thousands of dollars annually to do such simple tasks as a server migration.
How many more millions does the Lampasas Economic Development Corp (LEDC) have to waste on the “business park” before you second guess your decisions there? One million? Two million?
How many more $8,000 videos promoting Lampasas will the city pay for with zero results? How many more TML conferences will the city pay for with $1000 worth of hotel rooms, so the LEDC staff can go spin their wheels in more conferences and seminars with no results? How many more “consulting” contracts will you piss away money on? HALFF is now getting $120,000 to do the job that LEDC has been wasting $100,000 per year to (not) do. Do you think that is money well spent?
Not once in all her current self-congratulatory interviews has Misti “Drunken Sailor” Talbert made any mention of being the least bit concerned about the idiotic and wasteful spending of her administration and the administration before her.
One thing is sure – Talbert’s second term will provide me endless fodder and many boneheaded decisions to ridicule.
