Tag: more money wasted

City To Seriously Consider Blowing $2,212,950 On Hostess House “Rehab.” Over TEN TIMES Original Estimates!

Just don’t call it a remodel or a renovation. Those are “no no” words and conjure up memories of the $1,500,000 Old City Hall REMODEL fuckups back in 2017/2018/2019.

(As a reminder, the Old City Hall remodel was originally supposed to cost $350,000 and they thought THAT was too much! Final cost: well over $1.5 million)

You can call it a “rehabilitation” or a “refresh” or “redesign” if you like. I call it a giant cock up the ass of the taxpayers.

Remember: the Hostess House only brings in about $12,000 per year after expenses. They could literally just take that $2.2 million and throw it into t-bills and make 10x the return.

In case you forgot how we got here:

In the fall of 2019, the City took over the building from the DAR. According to them, it just needed some “minor repairs” and “minor decorations”…..

THEN it jumped up to “about $200,000”, according to City Manager Finley deGraffenreid in the Lampasas Dispatch in March 2021:

[But when computing things using FinleyMath(TM), you ALWAYS have to add a zero at the end. Like owning a boat. That $3 bracket for your home ends up costing $30 at the marine depot! It has happened over and over and over again. Thus, $200,000 becomes $2,000,000]

THEN it ballooned to $1,308,670 – which is a sick joke all by itself. Morons like Cathy “Pork Chop” Kuehne said they should keep the historical look “even if it costs more.”

Why not? It’s not her money! It’s just play money, apparently!

THEN it jumped again up to $1,879,483.55 [see page 67]

“Scope creep” means dummy council members throwing in everything on their wish list.

But wait…there’s more!

It jumped YET AGAIN to $2.15 million!

Then last February, City council dropped a load in their panties as they saw bids come in even higher than their ridiculous estimates:

So they had to go back to the drawing board. This, of course, costs MORE money to “revise” stuff as they decided to take out the 24k-gold toilets and diamond-crusted doorknobs….

Now they will probably pay $2.2 million and tell us it’s a DEAL because that is DOWN from the $2.97 million estimate last year! See how it works? No mention that it’s actually TEN TIMES MORE than they budgeted. Actually, probably 30 times more, since it originally was just “minor repairs,” they assured us.

Prediction: this will pass at $2.2 million on Monday night…but halfway through the construction, a LOT of new charges will come in as the contractor “surprisingly” finds issues nobody knew was there. These are called “change orders” and it’s the oldest trick in the book to grab more money from a government that is now trapped.

Since there will be no turning back at that point, the City will pay all that shit too. I’ll guess it’s another $100,000 at a minimum.

LEDC Decides To Take a Month Off. Shirk Monthly Meeting.

Normally the LEDC meets on the third Wednesday of every month. Well, except in December. And sometimes other months also. It all depends.

I went to see what was on the agenda this week, but it looks like they decided to take a siesta for March this year, to mix it up a little bit!

I mean, there isn’t much going on anyways. It’s not like they just saw City sales tax receipts drop 5% YoY, watched Eve’s Restaurant close down after 29 years, are staring at an empty $7.3 million business park with ZERO tenants anywhere in sight, just saw the Industrial Park agreement blow up and cost the City $45,000, saw Brodie Estates violate an agreement they spent $185,000 on or have a total solar eclipse coming in less than three weeks.

LEDC prez Misti Talbert and her appointed family members/cronies deserve a month off, don’t you think? Job well done. You can’t expect them to waste an entire 56 minutes once a month ALL the time, right?

BREAKING NEWS: Industrial Park Deal Now Terminated.

Well, well, well. The mighty Industrial Park agreement is officially deader than Dillinger. No distilleries, no microbreweries, no barber shops or food trucks or dog parks or anything else!

In case you forgot how ridiculous the pipe dream was, here is a reminder from a couple years ago:

Gee – who would have guessed that everyone was high on Covid stimmy farts back then and none of this would ever actually happen?! Not me, of course!

So just to be clear, here is how it all went down:

#1 – Martin’s proposes some pie-in-the-sky to Mandy Walsh WAAYYYY back around November of 2021. It includes nonsense about food trucks, a park, a distillery and lots of other pipe dreams. I predicted immediately that none of this would ever happen. See HERE and also HERE.

#2 – October of 2022: The City quietly blows $45,000 preparing the park for Martin to create his “RV and Boat Storage” ‘business’ which would employ zero people. I had to dig a bit to even find out about that. About $38,000 was spent clearing the concrete and another $7,000 was paid to the City’s hack attorney J.C. Brown to draw up some boilerplate terms.

#3 – Precisely zero boats and RVs were parked there for most of the first year. There was plenty of other junk piled in there, however.

#4 – August of 2023: Martin’s decides to open a ‘cigar lounge’ – but does it on the town square instead of the Industrial Park as originally suggested. LOL. Squarely punching Finley in the scrotum with that move.

#4 – February 1, 2024 deadline comes and goes without a peep from anyone. I ask the City AND several City council members what is going on, since MRC is now in violation (again) of their agreement. I wait over FIVE weeks for somebody to figure out what’s going on, exactly.

#5 – March 6, 2024 the entire thing is officially dead, according to a City council member. In his words: “I can now tell you, the lease will be terminated.“

Incredible! SO in essence, the City blew $45,000 in order to make $1,200 in rent – and they are still stuck with the property. That sounds about right.

Just wait until they spend $2 million on the Hostess House “upgrade” to make $12,000 a year in rent! They’re geniuses, I tells ya!

I’m sure the Business Pork will turn out WAY better than this! BAHAHAHAHAHAHA.