Tag: Misti Talbert

“Greasy” Chris Harrison: Then and Now – A Study in Hypocrisy.

Amazing what you can find in the archives. Like this little nugget from the Lampasas Dispatch Record (archives April 10th, 2015 – page 11). The Dispatch was interviewing then-candidate Chris Harrison as he ran for City Council a second time (he resigned with a year left in his term the first time around):

“The council candidate said he opposes tax abatements and other financial incentives to prospective businesses. He also said he was against city officials’ economic-development trips to California and a subsequent incentive agreement for a company that moved from California to Lampasas. “To me, it’s not the government’s place to fund private business,” Harrison said.

“The candidate said he learned from a grant program the City Council offered briefly in 2011. Under the program, which Harrison initially supported but later voted to repeal, small businesses that opened in Lampasas after a specified date were eligible for a grant of $5,000 from the city. Harrison said council members had good intentions but learned quickly there were problems with offering taxpayer money to businesses. “

Wow. Harrison sounds reasonable and intelligent here. He is 100% correct on those points. However, here we are about 4.5 years later and Harrison is singing a completely different tune.

NOW, Harrison has been hired by S2M2 Inc. – a local PRIVATE business. He recently went in front of city council to beg for $125,000 in “cost sharing” to pay for half of a detention pond his employer (a PRIVATE developer) needs. I guess if you are going to steal, then steal big, right Chris? You had a real problem with handing out $5,000 grants to small businesses (rightfully so) back in April of 2015 when you were running for Council but $125,000 to your new employer S2M2 Inc is just fine and dandy! Perhaps it should be Chris “The Hypocrite” Harrison instead of “Greasy” Chris.

It’s also VERY greasy that Council shot down the idea in May, but since FORMER COUNCIL MEMBER Harrison showed up to plead the case, now Misti Talbert says “city officials need to think again about a detention pond.” (Lampasas Dispatch 8-30-19 – page A4 – paragraph 12).

BONUS SCUMBAGGERY: The Dispatch archives also mention that Harrison owns a dirt contracting company he started in 2002. I wonder who will get the big, fat $250,000 contract for BUILDING this detention pond? Is that the deal, Chris? You go beg to your former Council chums for a $125,000 check to S2M2 Inc and then Steven McDonald (owner of S2M2) hands you the dirt contract? Sure looks that way from where I’m standing.

What an absolutely disgusting display of hypocrisy and wasteful spending all wrapped up in a big pile of dog shit. Will The Seven Goldfish look into this? I highly doubt it.

“Shovel Ready” – Another Lie

“You keep using that word…I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Years and years ago, there was much fanfare as ground was “broken” on the Lampasas Economic Development Corporation’s “Business Park”. Photos were taken of self-important politicians holding shovels in a 165-acre weed patch that was soon going to attract Big Businesses and “well-paying jobs” to Lampasas.

Eleven shovelers of bullshit

I laughed my balls off at this back then. The idea of a group of self-important Lampassholes “developing” the local economy is as hilarious to me as Soviet Politburo planners commanding their socialist economy. Anyone with a brain knows it doesn’t work.

Not to mention, the labor pool here is about a foot wide an an inch deep. A large portion of the labor pool has trouble with basic math and spelling….not to mention tying their shoes. If you don’t believe me, go spend five minutes reading Facebook posts on Lampasas County Breaking News.

They have wasted over a million dollars on this boondoggle so far. They even went so far as to have a ridiculous “artists rendition” drawn up of the futuristic, high-paying ‘business park”. See?

Of course, like all the other grandiose plans of dummy politicians, it was a disaster. Here is the current reality – a weed patch where corpses occasionally get dumped:

In a hilarious and ironic example of foreshadowing (look it up, Monica), they later realized their tiny $1,500 sign was almost impossible to read while speeding by at 70MPH – which is the speed limit on that road.

Even funnier is the red splotch on the upper left that reads “SHOVEL READY Q4 2015“. See it? I do. Well, that was a gigantic lie…and still is to this day. How do I know?

I know this by reading the LEDC’s own packets for next week’s meeting. On page 31-32 Mandy Walsh is giving details on the oh-so-huge interest in the Business Park...but the problem is that all of these interested parties are “on an accelerated timeline and we may not be able to accommodate”.

In other words, these saps actually thought that “shovel ready” meant “shovel ready” and they can move in tomorrow! Please!! The LEDC has only spent four years and over a million dollars since the “shovel ready” lie was painted on that sign! What do you think they are??? Miracle workers??

Mandy then adds that (and I quote) “…once infrastructure is in place FOR TRUE SHOVEL-READY SITES, I think we’ll gain even more interest.”

So, to once again parody The Princess Bride, I guess before now the sites were just MOSTLY shovel ready. Not ALL shovel ready, right?

But don’t despair! Pope Eckermann The Engineer has been handed a $100,000 tithe by the LEDC and HE will bless this park with more “development” and the high-paying jobs will then come rolling in! Hallelujah! Praise be to the LEDC!

Talbert Spouts a Lot of Hilarious B.S. to Justify Tax Increases

Well, Misti “Drunken Sailor” Talbert certainly has a sense of humor. This was evident with the ridiculous excuse she gave for increasing the tax rate 6.5% recently.

According to the Lampasas Dispatch, Talbert said “residents now receive a greater level of services than they did years ago, the last time the tax rate increased.”

I’ve been around here since 2011 – the last time the RATES were supposedly increased – and if there is a greater level of service since then, you sure sneaked it past me.

Unless by “services” you mean the service of taking huge piles of $100 bills from taxpayers/citizens and setting them on fire in a spectacular orgy of waste and incompetence.

You know – like the $1.5 million you blew remodeling Old City Hall, which was your signature vanity project. The waste included canceling a $34,000 A/V system that was properly bid on by Broadcast Works and instead blowing nearly $100,000 on a NO-BID A/V contract with Azbell Electronics.

That kind of service?

Or maybe the service she is referring to is taking the lowest bid of $96,000 for the Old City Hall elevator and throwing it in the trash bin and instead paying $126,000 for said elevator (which is currently 6 months past its installation date).

Maybe the “service” is blowing over $1,000,000.00 on a “Business Park” which remains an empty 165-acre weed patch used for nothing but dumping bodies?

A mayor who wastes six-figure and seven-figure sums over and over is not a mayor who is worried about money, obviously. Yet here we are a year later, and she is fine with jacking up property taxes over TWELVE PERCENT**….ready to blame the huge increase on “increased city services” instead of the piles of money wasted over the last few years on her pet projects.

** How do I get a 12% increase? Well, the average taxable value of a Lampasas residence increased over 6% last year – from $92,110 to $97,904…(must be all those newly-minted Corvive pyramid scheme millionaires in town bidding up mansions!!)

In fact, property VALUATIONS have been climbing ever since that same year of 2011 – a fact Talbert ignores when she tries to put lipstick on this pig by claiming RATES haven’t been raised since 2011. Tack on another 6.3% RATE increase on that increase valuation, and voila: over 12%.

While Talbert may be hilarious with her ridiculous explanations, in the end the joke is on the taxpayer who pays for her mistakes. As usual.

LEDC Hands Another $100,000 From “Business Park” Slush Fund to Pope Eckermann

Another ritualistic tithe has been handed to Pope Eckermann The Engineer – this time by the Lampasas Economic Development Corp. The LEDC is a non-profit group that takes large piles of tax money and sets them on fire in various imaginative ways – all in the name of “developing the Lampasas economy”.

This ritualistic destruction of tax money is performed by some of the same people who squander tax dollars over at City Council: Misti “Drunken Sailor” Talbert and TJ “No Insulting Nickname Yet” Monroe.

Some of the ways they have torched taxpayer money in the past include $8,000 to ‘develop an LEDC website’ and then directly handing Monica Wright $6,000 per year AND handing CivicPlus $1,575 per year to ‘manage’ said website, $767,768.00 (years ago) to Qro-Mex to run a water/waste water line to the still-non-existent “business park” which sits there as a 165-acre weed patch, $230,000.00 to run electricity to the same weed patch, close to $100,000 per year to the LEDC Director to, well, direct stuff (and go to countless useless conventions like TML, Save Your Town, Stand Up Rural America, plus workshops, round tables, brain storming and years of wasted time before finally deciding to pay Halff Associates $120,000 to just do the job for them) …..plus many, many, many thousands of dollars to repeatedly produce videos to “promote Lampasas” which are placed on YouTube, viewed 403 times by the LEDC and city employees and then promptly forgotten.

That’s just a taste of the waste.

But now, apparently in order to “do SOMETHING” on the 165-acre weed patch (after spinning their wheels for 7 years) and to throw good money after bad, the LEDC has decided to hand Pope Eckermann The Engineer $100,000 to “develop PART of the business park”. This is a STEAL compared to the $125,000 Pope Eckermann originally tried to squeeze out of the LEDC just a month earlier.

This bizarre compulsion to throw money at Pope Eckermann makes me wonder if he has compromising photos of members of LEDC and City Council. It simply boggles the mind.

What do we get for this six-figure payoff to the Pope? Topics of discussion included: project management (nice and vague), drainage analysis, the ever-present “geotech report”, fee schedule (?), project limits (??), bid phase services (???), approvals and permits, construction documents and a bunch of other buzz words that sound like about $8,000 of real work to an honest-working rube like myself who possesses no compromising photos of anybody, unfortunately.

We will delve into detailed history of LEDC money wasting soon – mainly focusing on this disastrous ‘business park” debacle.

Old City Hall “Wow Factor” Debacle Keeps Adding Up

The new pile of City Council packets brought more checks written for the Old City Hall Misty Talbert “Wow Factor” Vanity Project! ASJ Construction and Azbell Electronics will be throwing a huge party this Christmas. Hope Misti and Finley are invited! Here are some of the sums spent on the debacle project. This is by no means exhaustive. I’m sure I missed some stuff.

JNW Architects (the ones who bungled all kinds of things over the years – April 13, 2015): $56,020 over 5 payments between 2015 and 2017. It may be higher, but some of the checks are for “consulting” and it’s hard to say they were for the OCH debacle.

Azbell Electronics: $94,674 (this is for some TVs and microphones for City Council to use). Mind you, this system could have been had for $34,000 from Broadcast Works – but the money tree out back was bursting with cash, so why not spend it?? OVERPAY of $60,000.

RKJ Construction: $128,400 on an elevator (Austin Elevator bid $96,500 for this part of the project, but Council-genius Harrison wanted to “keep it local” and yank an extra $32,000 off the money tree out back). Well done! OVERPAY of $32,000 (elevator STILL not installed).

RKJ Construction: $13,500 to demolish interior of OCH and remove debris. This is the only contract I’ve seen that seems like a fair price. Go figure.

$12,780 for 100 stackable chairs. Monica purchased these FOUR YEARS AGO ($127 per chair) despite City Council meetings rarely exceeding 30 people. Where are the chairs now? Who knows. OVERPAY of $7,000.

$15,558 on other furnishings.

$8,055 for even MORE furnishings (Amazon Capital Services – page 18)

$7,313 for curbing and a pad for generator.

$5,596 for “geotechnical engineering study” – sounds like kissing the ring of Pope Eckermann.

ASJ Construction: Tons of checks here since they are the main contractor. Checks in the amount of: $134,692 $143,336 $211,435 $166,301 $153,458 $42,069 $45,162 $45,714 $45,514 $26,000 $14,732… and we aren’t done yet!!

The capper? ASJ also just billed the city $11,310 for “reception desk – city hall“. Did we just pay over eleven thousand dollars for a $&*%(^* desk??? I think we did. WOW Factor!! OVERPAY $6000

$60,000 for a fire suppression system – no idea who sells and installs this. Fire Department?

$7,500 for “phone” and “fiber patch”

Roughly $12,000 to remove bats from the building.

$45,194 to re-roof a roof that I’m pretty sure JNW Architects said was
“structurally sound” three years earlier (Oct 2016 JNW was paid $18,500 for “structural analysis and provide documentation” of said analysis).

Tonight they will discuss spending $27,850 to “improve parking lot conditions behind City Hall”.

What does it all add up to? A LOT. I remember the good old days (circa 2015) when the Grayson/White/Toups crew didn’t even want to spend $400k on this. Look at them now – around $1,500,000.00 and counting! Well done!!

New Info Emerges From City Hall Emails – Did City Manager and IT Director Deliberately Keep City Council in the Dark Over Exorbitant Cost of A/V System?

In short, the answer appears to be yes.

We have requested and received dozens of internal City Hall emails pertaining to the no-bid City Council chambers A/V system that was awarded to Azbell Electronics for almost $100,000 last July.

Emails belonging to the city manager, assistant city manager, city IT Director, Azbell sales rep Chris Anelundi and others involved in the expensive boondoggle were obtained through a Texas Open Records Request. They show city employees who have zero regard for tax dollars and who go out of their way to keep city hall in the dark over the true costs of the project.

The emails show the following information:

  • City Hall (IT Director, City Manager, assistant City manager) DID set out to re-bid the A/V system a second time around: Azbell and Broadcast Works were actively seeking to win the bid in Jan and Feb of 2017. This destroys Finley’s story he concocted (after the fact) that they didn’t need to re-bid the project since Azbell was a “buy board” member.
  • Assistant City Manager Gary Cox was well aware at the very start of this that Azbell was MUCH higher priced than other vendors. He pointed this out to Monica Wright – even giving an example of a video recorder he found for $2880 for which Anelundi and Azbell were charging $4880 – he called this “a significant markup over other vendors” in a private email to Monica dated Feb 8th, 2018.
  • ACM Gary Cox requested several bells and whistles for the project that added many thousands of dollars to the cost and weren’t really needed, but were fancy add-ons (including cameras and a wireless mike for the audience so audience members wouldn’t have to make the long walk up to the podium to speak on a normal microphone)
  • Broadcast Works was contacted by email by Monica (Dec 2016 through Feb 2017) and told the project was back on and there would be a second round of bidding. The Broadcast Works rep (Adam Comer) REPEATEDLY sent Monica emails expressing his hope to win the business, all the way through Feb and March 2017. Poor Adam was strung along, as Finley and Monica moved forward with Azbell behind his back – making the decision themselves to just go ahead with Azbell and not bothering to get a second bid. They did not even give Broadcast Works a chance to bid a second time after contacting them in Jan/Feb 2017 asking them to do just that!
  • Monica Wright was aware that Azbell had previously bid on this contract (and lost to Broadcast Works for being far more expensive) – she then informed current sales rep Chris Anelundi of this and even sent Anelundi the previous Azbell losing bid package (which was around $42,000)
  • Monica Wright SPECIFICALLY discouraged Anelundui from giving any hard numbers during his council presentation on March 13, 2017…going so far as to write in her email: “as far as budget numbers go, we won’t mention that to City Council Monday night” then adding that “the City Manager wants Council to know what all is involved with this project….if they know the capabilities of the A/V system, the components and equipment needed to achieve what we want, hopefully their jaw will not drop when we ask for approval.” [Editor note: sure sounds to me like they knew damn good and well this thing was ridiculously overpriced]
  • When the time came in July 2018 to actually go and ask for the ludicrous sum Azbell wanted for this vanity project, Monica appeared to have reservations about the cost again, writing in an email to Anelundi: “I am hoping they just award the contract and move on“

She got her wish. City Council rubber-stamped this thing with only feeble objections over the expensive earpieces for the hard-of-hearing.

In an email shortly thereafter, Anelundi (sounding quite amazed) asks “And just so I am clear, the approved amount totaled $94, 674.57 correct?” almost as if he can’t believe this group of wizards just ponied up TRIPLE the amount that Broadcast Works was going to do the job for a couple years earlier and well over DOUBLE the amount of the original, rejected Azbell bid of around $42,000 from just a few years earlier.

Digest that again: Council rejected Azbell’s original bid of $42,000 as it was about 25% more than the winning Broadcast Works bid (around $34,000). Then Monica comes back 2 years later, says “we’re finally doing this project”, tells Anelundi that his company, Azbell, was the losing bid last time around at $42,000 and then City Council goes on to APPROVE A NO-BID contract of almost NINETY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS to Azbell. I’m guessing Anelundi popped the champagne bottles that night, truly amazed at his good fortune.

Now, blame still falls squarely on City Council for approving this monstrosity and not asking any questions. Several council members were sitting in their seats the FIRST time this thing went through the bidding process [**cough Misti Talbert cough**] and the winner was Broadcast Works at $34,000. Somebody should have asked why this wasn’t competitively bid again. Somebody should have asked how the hell $95,000 was justified. Of course, Finley and Monica did their best to starve them of information on cost until the very last second, when they rammed this turd through in July 2018. Plenty of blame to go around.

The difference being City Council is an unpaid position, whereas Finley, Gary and Monica are quite highly paid – ostensibly because they are “experts” and “competent” and supposedly know what they are doing. I’d say this proves otherwise in the extreme.

The scariest part of all this? This debacle is just ONE item that popped up in the newspaper and seemed SO ridiculously over-the-top on price, that I was just enraged enough to spend a considerable chunk of my own time and money to find out what really happened. If I managed to hit the jackpot like this on my very first attempt, imagine all the other shenanigans that go on over there ALL THE TIME because nobody is paying attention.

THIS is the “leadership” that Misti Talbert supposedly exhibits as mayor? Please. Gimme a break. Talbert has pushed for this wildly overpriced boondoggle for years – as recorded in City Council minutes and chronicled here.

Perhaps a restructuring of incentives is needed at City Hall. I think the following would be a good start:

1 Make City Council a paid position and hold their feet to the fire for massive screw-ups like this one. The colossal sums wasted by the LEDC (Lampasas Economic Development Corporation) are another example.

2. Sharply reduce the salaries of these “experts” at the top of City Hall, since they have proven they do not have the taxpayers’ interests at heart, but only their own.

3. Have an outside entity go over the entire structure of City Hall to identify positions that are unneeded and/or paid grossly out of line with their private sector counterparts (and yes, the $30k per year in benefits counts towards their salary). Maybe take a look at what a lot of these people ACTUALLY do all day long (besides post on Facebook, go to loads of useless conferences with other city employees in other towns, and waste massive amounts of time and money planning a $1.5 million vanity project for City bigwigs)

Clearly, there needs to be a more adversarial role between Council and City Hall – especially the City Manager. Council should be looking out for the taxpayer since Finley and others at the top of City Hall clearly only look out for themselves.

Will any of these things happen? No. I’ll be called a trouble-maker and a pot-stirrer for daring to point out anything that might call into question the genius of those in charge. Better to just bury your head in the sand and let some government sponges hose the taxpayer over and over then ask for more.

City Council Throws ANOTHER $50,000 at Old City Hall Debacle

An additional $50,000 has been added to the Old City Hall debacle project as “contingency for possible expenses related to window treatments, landscaping and ‘additional improvements‘ [BLANK CHECK ALERT!].

Yes….it is a “contingency” amount.  I am willing to bet that not only will the entire $50,000 get spent, but another $15,000 on top of that if/when they decide they need ‘window treatments’ as fancy as the ones in Dallas or Austin.

The City is in receipt of “pay request #3” from the contractor, indicating 54% of project complete (they anticipate mid-December finish…HAHAHAHAHA).  Oh, and “there is some seeping on the walls, but he [who is he?  Doesn’t say] has consulted with the mechanical engineer”

Sounds like another disaster in the making.  Vague proclamations of seeping on the wall while an unknown person is supposedly looking into it.

How big is the pile of money they have set on fire now?  I’m seriously losing track.  Hold on while I peruse my own investigation notes….

…..ok.  Looks like we are getting very close to $1,500,000.00 now.  Between the change orders, the roof suddenly needing to be fixed (which JNW failed to notice when they collected $18,000 from Finley to do a structural analysis), now this $50,000…plus more to come.

Remember back in April of 2015 when city council was fighting over this entire project and $375,000 was set aside?  Then the first estimate came it at $750,000?  And Misti Talbert was all gung-ho for this train wreck anyways??  Saying she “couldn’t make an uninformed decision”?  I sure do.

So we went from $375,000 to $750,000 and now to DOUBLE THAT at $1,500,000.00 and STILL not done.  

I hope that when we fall into a recession (possibly next year) and sales tax receipts plummet and the city is staring a huge deficit in the face (because they will NEVER cut City Hall fat $100k salaries, we know that) and your taxes get raised YET AGAIN….well, I hope everyone remembers who was behind this colossal waste of money.

But hey, at least you can go look at your $100,000 TV sets hanging on the walls of your $1,500,000.00 City Hall for two hours twice a month during council meetings!  Woo hoo!  Money well spent.  Perhaps we should name it the Misti-Talbert-Finley-deGraffenreid-Azbell-Memorial-City-Hall so nobody forgets the great minds behind this project.