Monica Wright – Page 3 – The Original Lampasshole

Monica Wright Defended in the Comments Section….by Monica Wright

Why dont [sic] you move your sorry ass out of here if you hate it so bad. Youre [sic] a damn disgrace attacking Mrs Wright like you have. And by doing so you show what a moron you really are. You obviously have no understanding of how anything works. Theres [sic] plenty to be pissed at the city, i.e. the city manager and the council about, but cursing and degrading monica wright is Not [sic] only wrong, it’s completely misguided. You are irrational, hot headed, foul mouthed and apparently unhinged, you are stalking her on FB and apparently have a vendetta against her, why on earth would or should she meet with you? You need to get back on your meds and chill out. First of all the equipment was bought through a cooperative purchasing agreement with buyboard….look it up its [sic] a state law that you can do that. Secondly she went through months of meetings with council memebers [sic] and admin about what they wanted in the building. She only specified what she was told to put in there. Stop blaming her for doing her job.

When I first saw this comment on this post, I thought for SURE it was Monica Wright. Who else would babble about the “buyboard”? Who else would then say “she went through months of meetings with council memebers”[sic]? Who else would pass the buck with a face-saver like “she only specified what she was told to put in there”? LOL. Only Monica Wright would do that. [P.S. she also threw the city manager and city council under the bus in her comments! You catching all this, Finley?? Theres [sic] plenty to be pissed at the city, i.e. the city manager and the council about]

Or maybe that was a weak attempt to throw suspicion away from herself?

Little does Monica know, but this blog records the IP address of all comments.

Luckily, there are plenty of little chirping birdies at City Hall who apparently have had enough of Saint Monica. The IP address of that comment is 107.77.217.155 – which, when traced backwards, looks like Monica Wright’s cell phone. You might think a big, important IT Director would at least know to mask her IP address, no? Here is a free hint for next time, sweetie: download IP Vanish.

This is just a very tiny example of her incompetence. I’m sitting on a mountain of evidence and my cup runneth over. What to print first?? The money she wastes on the city website hosting with CivicPlus? Her lack of credentials? The whole fiber optic line thing that cost $20,000 but was never hooked up? The ‘road trip’ with a certain former Mayor to Dallas and Austin and Round Rock to try and copy their bigger and more expensive City Council Chambers (which finally explains how you were dumb enough to sign off on a $100,000 A/V system). Hmmmm….so many choices.

Or maybe we jump straight to Tyler Technologies and how they actually do your work for you, at great cost to the taxpayer?? My, my. So many choices.

Oh, and to the moron who commented HERE that “I hear your name, address, and business will be made public very soon. You want to be the big dog saving Lampasas then own it“?….your IP address shows up starting with 174…..which seems to be a City of Lampasas IP address – their mifi Verizon account. Somebody over at City Hall better put the clamps on computer use for personal reasons (Finley?). It is against the rules. To wit:

City of Lampasas Personnel Policies 1.03: The city manager is responsible for the administration of the personnel policies and procedures.

AND

Policy 2.15 City computer systems, including Internet access and electronic mail systems, are to be used for city business…..all computer systems are city property…there is no expectation of privacy for an employee using these systems.

So, dear Finley and City Council, Monica and others have been repeatedly caught violating this rule. What’s the punishment?? Anything? Bueller? Bueller?

Oh…and one more piece of evidence: Monica babbling on Facebook several times at around 2:05 pm on a Friday at work (Oct 6th, 2017)….she was yammering multiple comments to Misti, Delana and Mandy while they were at the Texas Municipal League Annual Conference last October in Houston (yes, we need three people to go to a conference…we can afford it). Is that city work? See photo evidence below:

Busily kissing the butts of the Mayor and a city council member. No wonder nobody ever reins her in! MUCH more to come soon.

UPDATE** -New comment HERE! AGAIN from the same 174 IP address (174.207.21.252) belonging to the City of Lampasas.

Document Dump – Part III (Monica’s Salary and Benefits)

Every paper-pusher government employee (and their parents) naturally think they are overworked and underpaid. They labor under this delusion because a lot of them have LITERALLY never worked in the private sector. They have no clue what it is like to be under the pressure to perform value-added functions for a profit-driven firm. They are tax TAKERS and not tax PAYERS.

Now, there are plenty of city employees who bust their ass and are probably underpaid – like the poor bastards who have to wake up at 3am and fix a broken water main or a downed power line. The people who DO something tangible and have a valuable skill. Monica Wright is not one of these people.

Monica is in Pay Group 30. Which, according to the Texas State Auditors Office, means she earns between $101,630 and $171,881 per year. A range you could drive a truck through, but for sure more than the $100,000 I have been claiming from my very first post (and for which her mommy called me a liar). We must go to the budget to narrow it down further.

Monica is “Director” of the IT Department. The IT Department consists of one person – the network administrator….who I suspect is some poor schlub who actually does the hard work of crawling into attics and walls to lay Ethernet cables. I know that the Network Admin starts in Pay Group 15 (which is a salary of between $33,000 and $52,000).

So, now that we know there are only TWO people in the entire IT Department (a worker and a chick who ‘directs’ him to work) we can look at the budget figures and pin down the salary and benefits further.

In the 2017/2018 budget, the following was printed:

Full time salary: $119,394 (this number has jumped almost 14% in last two years…meaning Monica appears to have gotten a nearly 7% raise in each of the last two years. WTF??)

Extra pay: $1,418 (I believe this is called “appreciation pay” and is essentially a bonus of one week’s salary paid in December – it is mentioned on page 29 of the employee manual)

Longevity pay: $644 (Monica gets $550 and it will jump to $700 in 2 years)

Then come the big fat benefits they never talk about!!

Retirement: $18,255 (according to the Employee Manual, city employees pay 7% into the Texas municipal workers retirement fund, and the city pays in TWICE that amount. Must be nice.)

Employee insurance: $28,097 (this number has jumped 40% in two years – nobody said why in my records request.)

Three weeks of paid vacation. Two weeks of sick days (10 days) which can be rolled into the next year if not used. All twelve holidays off, plus any other granted by city council. Life insurance payout of one year’s salary in the event of death (paid for by city). She may or may not have a city car…they won’t tell me. Oh…and around $800 stipend to pay for a phone.

The amount budgeted for “benefits” has risen 16% in the last two years.

Add all this up and the “salary and benefits” section of the budget, for two people in the IT Department, is close to $180,000. There is no way Saint Monica makes less than her underling – so I’m guessing that $120,000 in salary is split right about $80,000 to her and $40,000 to the network admin. Add in all the bennies and you’re talking well over $100,000 in total cost to the taxpayer.

For what? How competent is Monica (besides the Azbell debacle, I mean)? Does she come anywhere CLOSE to being worth $105,000 to the city?? Future posts will delve into this matter.

Monica’s Melons

“Do not stoop to tie your laces in your neighbor’s melon patch” — Old Chinese proverb.

This was always one of my favorite sayings. Simple…clever…and requiring a tiny knowledge of melon growing. Do you understand the meaning? I’ll explain and simplify, so that even the ENTIRE Sullivan family can understand it.

It means, it is wise to avoid even the APPEARANCE of impropriety or theft. Maybe your shoe is untied…maybe it isn’t. Maybe you were about to steal the neighbor’s melon and maybe you weren’t. Perhaps it was an innocent shoelace tying…or maybe it was something more malicious, like melon theft.

(Even more simply, in deference to the Sullivans, melons grow on the ground, and it would require bending over to steal one).

Get it? You wait until AFTER you exit the melon patch to tie that shoe. That way, there are no misunderstandings or appearances of scum-baggery. For a tiny bit of effort (waiting a few minutes to tie the shoe), you avoid a big ugly mess of accusations.

It would also apply to, say, getting several bids on a $100,000.00 project to install a bunch of giant TVs and microphones and fancy iPads and stuff all over Lampasas city Council Chambers. By getting three different companies to COMPETE over a project, you insure that everything is (and looks!) above board. This COMPETITION is how you get the best price. Without it, you end up with something like the post office – terrible product and high price.

So…it makes me wonder why everyone in the city is digging their heels in on this thing. Monica could have picked up a phone and gotten two more bids…which costs the city zero. The downside to that is literally ZERO. The upside is that they may save $40,000. So why isn’t it being done?? The fact that they are all willing to go to the mat on such a horrible decision makes me wonder if melons are being stolen. Know what I mean? They are all doubling down and defending a terrible decision that is clearly wasting money for the city.

Maybe Azbell handed somebody an envelope full of cash…maybe they didn’t. Maybe people were promised their OWN 70′ TV from Azbell for their home…maybe they weren’t. There is no way to prove or disprove that and I’m just giving examples of how something that looks this bad might be construed- but it sure makes the imagination run wild….and it could all have been avoided by picking up the phone for two more bids. But they won’t. So why are they all choosing to “die on this hill” as it were?

Why not get two more bids? I’m still waiting for that answer. Especially from those who are hell-bent on attacking me and defending Monica and her melons.

Monica Wright Busy Destroying Evidence of Herself Goofing Off on Facebook During Work Hours

Monica Wright, our super hard-working IT Director who screwed the taxpayers out of $100,000 last month, has been a busy little bee! One of the questions I submitted to Jo-Christy Brown was “are there specific rules banning government employees from using social media (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc) for personal reasons during work hours? If so, what is the punishment for violating those rules?”

There was a reason for this seemingly random question. You see, I suspect most of these wildly overpaid government parasites do very little work during the day. They sit there and waste the taxpayer dime posting pictures of their cat on Facebook.

Apparently word must have gotten out to Monica and she is slightly smarter than she looks. She has been busily deleting any Facebook post that was made during working hours – and believe me, there were a lot of them. Luckily for you, dear reader, I took a screenshot of one of them a month ago – because I know that when you turn on the lights, the roaches go scurrying for cover. I was right…she is running for cover and deleting all the evidence.

As you can see in the photo, she posted personal photos on her page at 11:19 am on Monday July 16th. If you go to her FB page now (go ahead and do it now, I’ll wait here….) that post is now gone. Which means she knew damn good and well she shouldn’t have been wasting taxpayer time on that crap. I found at least TEN instances of this last month as I went through her posts. Looks like she scrubbed them all. A sure sign of a guilty mind. Makes you wonder what other things she has been up to.

So in addition to being wildly overpaid and being too lazy to get more than one bid on a huge job, she apparently has plenty of time to sit around and post personal photos on her personal Facebook page while sitting at her government job. Must be nice! She’s worth every penny, isn’t she?

Azbell Electronics pillaging Lampasas for $100,000.00 – City council OK with that!

Most suckers (I mean taxpayers!) see city council wasting money and just figure they can’t fight City Hall. They don’t have the time or the energy. They have real jobs, after all. Jobs that require them to get up at the crack of dawn and weld, or pour concrete or work the ranch in 100-degree heat.

Or maybe they don’t want everyone to get mad at them for pointing out the emperor has no clothes…they don’t want to be a jerk for making a big stink when money is clearly being wasted on idiotic ideas by city government.

For instance, they might not want to be seen as a jerk for pointing out we are spending ONE MILLION DOLLARS to RENOVATE City Hall.

(That’s $1,000,000.00 to RENOVATE an existing structure)

Or maybe they feel stupid and don’t want to be considered mean for calling out city council and IT Director Monica Wright for wasting ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND TAX DOLLARS on an audio/visual system for council chambers.

Yes…you read that right. City council and IT Director Monica Wright think it’s perfectly normal to flush $100,000.00 down a toilet for some TVs and microphones in city council chambers.

Well, one sucker has had enough. Me. I’ll be the Original Lampasshole. I’ll channel your rage. I’ll tell you the truth. I’ll get yelled at by city council and moron government employees. I’ll spend hours of my own time dogging these clowns about every penny they fritter away.

This website was started out of rage over ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS being wasted on an audio/visual system for city council. But there are MANY more instances of waste, fraud and abuse. Please check back often to see the latest ways you, dear reader, as being screwed by a bunch of lazy, overpaid, government buffoons.

Azbell Electronics Charging Lampasas an Arm and a Leg!!!

As reported by the Lampasas Dispatch, city council has recently approved a nearly ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLAR EXPENDITURE on an A/V system for council chambers.

How is this possible? I wondered the same thing. After all, you can buy a HOUSE for that kind of money. How can a few microphones and speakers cost this much?

I contacted several council members and gave them a chance to explain the inexplicable. The verdict?

“Well, what can you do? Government always gets screwed”, they told me.

“It seemed about $20,000 too high to me”

“Yeah, it’s a boatload of money”, said another.

Seriously?? Sounds like they’re REALLY trying hard to save money, doesn’t it?

I asked how many companies bid on the job. Do you know what IT Director Monica Wright told me? They don’t need other bids. One bid will suffice: Azbell Electronics – who does a lot of military work out at Fort Hood. I’ll let you in on a secret you probably already know: companies who deal with the military are used to wildly overcharging them and having zero oversight.

ONE BID? For a ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLAR job?

I asked city council for the bid sheet. Guess what the VERY FIRST item on the sheet is? They are going to get FOUR 70-inch BIG SCREEN TVs at a cost of $2,150 each. Yes, you read that correctly. City council, which meets twice a month in the tiny little town of Lampasas, needs FOUR 70-inch BIG SCREEN TVs in their chambers….and they are willing to pay $8,600.00 of your tax dollars for that luxury.

I don’t have a 70-inch TV…do you, dear reader? They didn’t even exist until a few years ago. Gee…how the heck did city council get along for the last 10 or 20 years without this extremely vital equipment???

Furthermore, a 30-second search on the Internet found a Vizio 70-inch TV for sale at $900. Therefore, Azbell Electronics is charging $2,150 for a TV that could be had for $900. And they are doing it FOUR TIMES. That’s $8,600 in TVs just for starters. ARE YOU INSANE????

Since city council didn’t seem to care about this colossal waste of money, I emailed IT Director Monica Wright about this immediately. I asked for a meeting to talk about this. Maybe give her a chance to explain the inexplicable. Do you know what she said? She copied and pasted a couple sentences from the bid sheet! She couldn’t even be bothered to write a response telling me to buzz off!!

“While I understand your concerns as a taxpayer, I assure that all purchasing policies and state local guidelines were met and with best value kept in mind. If you would like to address City Council on the matter, please feel free to speak at one of our City Council meetings that is held on the 2nd and 4th Monday of each month at 7pm.”

This response was COPIED and PASTED straight from the bid sheet. Not even an original response! Monica Wright, the city IT Director who appears to make over $100,000 per year in salary, pension and benefits, essentially told me she can’t be bothered to meet with the chumps who pay her salary. Guess she’s super, duper busy working those government hours! Must be nice to land a cushy government job and apparently make $100,000.00 in salary, benefits and pension in a town where the average salary is around $24,000 and over 21% live below the poverty line. Very nice indeed! And air conditioned, to boot! Where do I sign up??

SO….here we are. City council will do nothing. City IT Director Monica Wright thinks this is all quite normal. She can’t be bothered to lower herself to meet with the peons like me…or to pick up a phone and get another bid on a ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLAR A/V system. What is a squeaky wheel to do??

The average citizen would just give up. Not me. I told these buffoons I will be starting a blog JUST TO EXPOSE THEM. I will also be filing several Freedom of Information Act letters requesting details on the profligate spending in the Information Systems Department of Lampasas.

More to come soon…..

The Original Lampasshole