money wasting – The Original Lampasshole

Burnet School Superintendent Makes $205,000 Per Year. BEFORE All The Recent Raises!

But yeah…keep telling me that the schools are underfunded. Tell me again when you get your property tax estimates in a couple of weeks.

You might remember Keith McBurnett. I wrote about him a while back:

Keith McBurnett, Superintendent Of Burnet CISD, Is a Wildly Overpaid, Opportunistic, Worm-Filled Turd.

Well, that was then. This is from 2022:

THIS bullshit is why we desperately need school vouchers. The corrupt teachers unions and make-work Nerf job holders like McBurnett and Rascoe are strongly against that, of course. That’s because they are slugs who are afraid to compete in a free market for education. The free market would quickly eliminate overpaid bullshit positions like this and money would flow to the best teachers while the dogshit teachers got fired and ended up bagging groceries at HEB.

The schools are broke??? Hardly.

In March 2021 the federal government sent $112 billion out to 14,000 districts with almost no strings attached. The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, funding came on top of another $60 billion from two earlier waves of pandemic relief dollars for schools (in sum, roughly three times the annual federal investment). Never before had schools seen anything like it.

To say school districts were (and still are) flush with cash is an understatement. District leaders have more money at their disposal than ever before.

You want to know how I know vouchers are an awesome idea that would definitely work? Because the biggest moron in town is against them. He’s wrong about everything else and he’s wrong about this too…

For The “Schools Need More Money!” Crowd…

I’ve spoken before about the Kansas City, Missouri ~~disaster~~ “experiment” where a judge forced taxpayers to VASTLY increase spending on schools and NOTHING changed. The incredible story is HERE.

There is ALSO the fact that the U.S. spends FAR MORE per pupil than any other industrialized nation – and has far shittier results. CLEARLY, it is not about “more money” for schools. They have a TON of it already:

The US spends more on education than other countries. Why is it falling behind?

[The US spent an average of $16,268 a year per student, well above the global average of $10,759 – those are 2017 numbers. It is FAR worse now.]

Now we have more proof from Chicago that throwing piles of money at the schools is NOT the answer:

Spry Community Links High School, in the Heart of Little Village in Chicago, says its vision is to “provide a challenging and supportive environment…to enable our students to succeed in the 21st century.”

Number one on the school’s focus list?

“Increasing reading and math scores to or above grade level.”

But a look at state data that tracks reading and math scores for each Illinois school reveals two frightening facts about Spry. Not a single one of its 88 kids at the school can read at grade level. It’s the same for math. Zero kids are proficient.

Spry is one of 30 schools in Illinois where not a single student can read at grade level. Twenty-two of those schools are part of the Chicago Public Schools and the other eight are outside Chicago.

The failure list in math is even longer. There are 53 schools statewide where not one kid is proficient in math.

And only 1 out of 10 kids or less can do math at grade level in 930 schools…that’s more than a quarter of all schools in the state.

Defenders of the current system are sure to invoke covid as the big reason for the low scores. But a look at the 2019 numbers show that the reading and math numbers were only slightly better than they are now.

Take Spry, for example. Just 2 of the school’s 127 students in 2019 could read at grade level before the pandemic. In math, zero students were proficient.

The failure isn’t about money, either. Data from the Illinois State Board of Education shows spending at Spry was already at $20,000 per student before the pandemic.

Today it spends $35,600.

THIRTY-SIX THOUSAND!!!!

What’s really incredible is that many of these schools are rated “commendable” by the Illinois State Board of Education. That’s the 2nd-highest of four “accountability” ratings a school can receive.

Not a single one of the 113 students at Sandoval Sr High School can read or do math at grade level. And yet the school is “commendable.”

Same with Ralph Ellison Chicago International Charter School. Over $24,000 spent on each of its 172 students. Labeled “commendable.” And none of the students are proficient in either reading or math.

In a sane world, schools that don’t and can’t teach a single student the most basic of skills would be shut down. But here, they carry on…the system thrives while students wither.

The libtards bleat for more money constantly, but that is CLEARLY not the answer.

“Not Yet Finalized”

Memorandum:

For the 15th month straight, the agreement between the City of Lampasas and Martin’s Rod and Custom for the “Industrial Park” is “not yet finalized”.

It begs the age-old question: if an agreement sits on a desk forever and is never finalized, is it actually an agreement?

When does it cease to be an agreement-in-waiting and become another failed pipe dream of the LEDC? Will they ever admit the deal fell through or are they all running a secret pool to see how many months in a row I’ll ask for this fucking thing?

Anyways – looks like THAT was $38,000 wasted! Nobody knows how to piss money away like the City of Lampasas.

Some Lady Rented Out The Hostess House – Shows Us What a Shit Pile It Is…

Catherine Groothoff recently rented out the Hostess House.

It did not go well:

The City only just barely took control of the Hostess House a mere 29 months ago! What do you think they are…miracle workers?

Catherine must be new in town or she doesn’t read here. If she DID, she would understand that the numbskulls who run the City can’t be bothered with the little things. They are too busy arguing about how to blow the next million dollars on some hare-brained project – like the Business Pork.

You want them to spend $400 or $500 to fix a sink and get a new microwave? Surely you jest. They are busy planning to spend $1.4 million on the Hostess House “facelift” and “minor repairs”. It will take another year in addition to that $1.4 million. They cannot be bothered to replace a microwave. What fun is that?

I’m sure they DO have people to fix a sink, but they are too busy wasting time and money putting in hose bibs, pipes and a $12,750 water tank for a local moron to grow a couple of squash at the Community Garden!

It’s the same reason they blow almost $200,000 on a “pavilion” but literally 100 feet away at the local pool, they won’t spend any money to hike lifeguard wages to make sure the pool is fully staffed for summer. They’d rather close it an extra day every week.

It’s the same reason the City electric fund is “in trouble” and rates had to be hiked on everyone last November while they simultaneously give out hundreds of thousands of dollars in ‘free’ electrical subsidies to rich developers at Stone Valley, Hidden Oaks and Hillside Acres.

See how it works?

It’s also the reason the water fountains at the 580 Sports Complex have been non-functioning since March 2020. They cannot be bothered with something that tiny. They are too busy deciding if they should waste $1.3 million on a bike path over there that nobody will use.

Now, I’m not sure who to point the finger at…..so I’m just going to go ahead point it squarely at Cathy Kuehne since she is up for election next month and actually has a challenger. She’s also the one who was quoted that they should keep the historical look at Hostess House “even if it costs a little more“.

Cathy Kuehne: great spender of OTHER people’s money since 2018!

TJ Monroe Spending Makes Talbert Look Like a Penny Pincher

I used to call Mayor Talbert a “drunken sailor” for her propensity to blow money like an inebriated seaman on shore leave. She was instrumental in wasting $1.5 million renovating Old City Hall as well as handing out hundreds of thousands in “free money” to developers like Deorald Finney and S2M2. Terrible decisions that the City is still suffering from today.

But TJ Monroe is putting her to shame with some of the latest ridiculous money wasting going on now.

Here is a taste:

HOSTESS HOUSE:

In October 2019, when the City decided to take over the Hostess House, we were told it needed a few “minor repairs” and “minor decorations”. They spent about $6,000 on a new HVAC at that time also. So a normal person might think “eh, they’ll spend eight or nine grand on some stuff and that will be it”.

You’d be wrong. By August 2020, the new estimate was $500,000. [see page 20]

The CURRENT estimate is $1.3 million dollars. That’s $1,300,000.00 on an “event venue” that currently brings in MAYBE $10,000 per year in rental fees after expenses. So it will only take them 130 years to get their money back.

Only true shit head politicians could go from “a couple grand” to “$500,000” to “$1.3 million” and not blink an eye or maybe question if this was even REMOTELY a good use of funds. Clearly nobody learned a single thing from the $1.5 million Old City Hall debacle, because they are about to do the exact same thing AGAIN!

SKATE PARK:

WAY back in July 2020, a local school teacher heard a radio ad for a skate park/outreach center in California and thought “that would be cool!”

No, I am not joking. That is exactly how the whole thing started. Link to entire article is HERE. The name of her non-profit is “Wings of Eagles Outreach”.

Anyhow, we heard the usual nonsense about how this would be a public/private partnership and the usual hints were made that there would be private donations and volunteering…kind of like the “Bike and Hike” trail project that never went anywhere.

Initial skate park costs were said to be around $200,000. That was SO last year, though. NOW the estimate is $400,000 [see page 20] and I can guarantee you the final cost will be far higher.

Seeing as how “Wings of Eagles” had a grand total of $5,824 in their bank account at their last non-profit filing, something tells me they aren’t going to be shelling out hundreds of thousands to make this happen. No, that burden will fall on the taxpayers.

Personally, I think the skate park is a terrible idea. Mike White and Misti Talbert were huge champions of this thing. Time will tell if it was worth it or not.

But the fact remains that we went from “I heard an ad on the radio! Sounds cool” to $200,000 to the current $400,000 tells you all you need to know about how TJ Monroe operates and how little she values tax dollars.

City Can’t Find Money To Pay Lifeguards. But They Had TONS Of Money For Stuff That NEVER Benefitted The Taxpayer

By my calculations, it would take maybe $20,000 extra to bump up wages for lifeguards this summer to a respectable level. Without doing that, the city has zero chance of recruiting from a very tight labor market. That would mean the Hannah pool would be closed for TWO YEARS STRAIGHT.

That’s unacceptable. Letting a huge investment like a pool sit there unused for yet ANOTHER summer is a massive failure of leadership from both City council and our overpaid City manager Finley deGraffenreid.

Don’t tell me there isn’t money in the budget. These clowns ALWAYS have a chunk of money to waste on projects and people who don’t deserve it. Here are a few ways the City was wasted a ton of money on themselves and their chosen buddies:

The City spent $7,500 on a grant application that was never submitted.

Wasted $12,000 on a WHIM – for some PLANS (yes, a piece of paper) for a future bike trail that will likely never be built.

City manager was given a very quiet $10,000 raise from $130,000 to $140,000 last May in the middle of a pandemic when taxpayers were losing their jobs by the millions.

They wasted $96,000 on a NO-BID A/V system for City council chambers They had a bid from Broadcast Works for around $35,000 – instead they went no-bid with Azbell and blew an extra $60,000 right there.

They went with a $128,000 elevator (for City Hall remodel again!) when there was a $96,000 bid on the table from Austin Elevator. That’s ANOTHER $32,000 wasted in the blink of an eye.

They sold a building for $75k then bought it back for $229k – City Hall building AGAIN. That’s $154,000 squandered.

They squandered almost $170,000 on a pre-fab BATHROOM in Campbell Park….yet another no-bid project that could have been done for half of that. That’s about $80,000 wasted.

Mike White managed to find about $40,000 instantly last year to provide “free” electricity to the businesses they forced closed due to Wuhan flu – including paying money to Burger King, which is a major corporation listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Apparently there was just $40,000 laying around unused.

Rich developer Deorald Finney was handed “free” electrical hookups for his houses in Stone Valley a year or two ago – at a cost to the City of about $72,000 in lost fees. Deorald lives in a mansion, by the way. But they had no trouble kissing $72,000 goodbye to “help him out”. TJ Monroe actually voted to give him MORE breaks and wanted to waive all his building permit fees!!! Yes, the same TJ Monroe who is up for election in a few weeks.

Developer S2M2 was handed $185,000 for THEIR housing development after FORMER CITY COUNCIL MEMBER “Greasy” Chris Harrison begged for it.

City council and the LEDC spent $15,000 on three giant metal LTX letters that sit in the town square, supposedly attracting throngs of tourists. LOL.

The City has wasted MILLIONS on the “business park”. Literally millions.

The City spent over ONE POINT FIVE MILLION DOLLARS on the “Old City Hall” renovation, which is used by City council twice a month for approximately 2 hours.

City handed $70,800 to Eckermann Engineering to YET AGAIN “survey” and “engineer” the ‘business’ park in preparation for “Phase I” (actually Phase II) construction for a 165-acre goat pasture that has sat empty for the last 17 years or so. City STILL doesn’t know how they are going to pay to implement these plans they paid $70,800 for. Typical!

Sales tax receipts were so far ahead of projections last year (thanks to stimmy money sloshing around) that Finley suggested giving every warm body on the City payroll a 5% raise. Just not the lifeguards, I guess.

So, as you can see: when it comes to handing out piles of money to their rich developer buddies or to build vanity projects to serve themselves (like the Old City Hall project), there is ALWAYS money to be burned.

But try and pay some local high school kids a reasonable wage so a major investment like a COMMUNITY POOL can open up, and that is just a bridge too far.

What a complete clown show.