Tag: professional services

More Money Torched By LEDC – ‘Professional Services’

From 2004 through 2013, the LEDC incinerated over $250,000 of taxpayer money on ‘professional services’ (later labeled ‘contract services in 2012 and 2013). I stopped listing at 2013 because I have already covered 2014 onwards by a records request previously. That’s where Pope Eckermann really had his snout in deep and I didn’t want to double count. For instance, ‘contract services’ was $138,516 in 2015 – which overlaps with the $168,740 I previously showed him scarfing down.

What are ‘professional services’? Who the hell knows. Nice and vague. The IRS Form 990 gives you a LOT of categories into which you can slot your expenses. But LEDC chose to enter their own. Here is a list I made by compiling them by year:

In 2003, they just used the term “other services” which is even MORE vague. It is a whopping $185,794!!! (or over $250,ooo in today’s dollars). I have to think if a quarter of a MILLION dollar line item popped up in the LEDC today and it said “other services” it would seriously raise some eyebrows. Looks like these idiots got away with murder back then.

I mean, this was BEFORE they bought the corpse repository ‘business’ park! These clowns start up a “non-profit” for “economic development” and then have the balls to spend $230,000 on “legal fees”, “admin and overhead” and “other”? Jesus Christ! These are UNELECTED BOZOS making huge sums disappear ($320,000 in today’s dollars!)

That “admin and overhead” number adds up too! It was $18,000 in 2003 ($25,000 in today’s dollars) then jumped to $24,000 in 2004, 2005 and 2006. Finally, it dropped in half to $12,000 from 2007 up until present day….or another $246,000 vanishing into thin air.

Admin and overhead for what, exactly? We already have Mandy Walsh ostensibly running the LEDC for $101,285 in salary and benefits. Soon, the City will create another Nerf job (Development Director) costing the taxpayer another six-figures. Yet the LEDC still needs $12,000 per year for “admin and overhead”? Lovely.

Start adding all these nickels and dimes up and you can see how the LEDC wasted the $4.1 million dollars they have skimmed since 2000.

Well, it’s not entirely wasted. We DO have a 165 acre weed patch with $800k of water/sewer pipes under the dirt. Eckermann is hard at work as we speak spending the latest $100,000 to ‘develop’ this shovel-ready site even more!!

City Paying Three Times To Do One IT Job

I’m sure you have all gotten your property tax bills by now!  Happy?  You’ll be REALLY happy when you read yet another chapter of waste in the IT Department!

I just love picking up stacks of records from City Hall.  Love it.  It’s like Christmas in October.  Today, I was handed a nice big pile of copies (for only $151.60) pertaining to IT Department expenses under the heading “Professional Services” [budget line 505-5395].  As I have pointed out recently, in addition to our two highly paid IT ‘experts’, the IT department farms out a lot of work to “professionals” who then do the work that our ‘experts’ are unable or unwilling to do.  One of these “Professional Services” is TSM Consulting….and boy, do they make some easy money!

I was hoping that these copies of the TSM bills would provide SOME KIND of description of what EXACTLY the city is getting for their $1,800 per month.  Nope.  Nearly every single page looks like this:

Just month, after month, after month (for YEARS) of shelling out $1,800 to TSM Consulting…for “monthly network support”.  All initialed and approved by “MW”…seriously??  Her “Network Administrator” is supposed to be doing that stuff – it says so right in her job description:

Of course, neither our IT Director NOR our Network Administrator has a single certification from Cisco or Microsoft.  Most “experts” have their CCENT or CCNA or CCNP certifications.  Not our well-paid experts.  And why should they?  Just sit back and have the suckers taxpayers pay TSM Consulting $1,800 a month instead!  Presto! The city is paying three people to do one job!  And you wonder why your taxes go up every year.  Incredible.  Monica has been there THIRTEEN YEARS and does not posses an entry-level network certification.  Nor does her underling Kristy Acevedo.

Even worse, it appears that TSM Consulting gets paid $1,800 per month just to be on-call in case of a problem.  So they get paid to do nothing most of the time.  How do I know this?  Well, buried away in my pile of Christmas gifts was this – a nice double billing for Feb 29, 2016:

Yes, that’s right – in addition to the ‘normal’ $1,800 in free money paid to TSM in February 2016, it appears there was actually something for them to do.  Namely “remote support setup, network mapping, and internet and firewall troubleshooting” – and for THAT, we paid ANOTHER $2,000 on top of the $1,800 retainer!  Are you kidding me??  It also doesn’t even state how much time they spent on it!  Just “quantity 1” and “rate $2,000”.  Would be nice to see how many hours they actually spent on this.  Incredible!  Nobody knows how to burn money like the IT Department.

Worse yet, TSM isn’t the only one getting paid to do our IT Department’s jobs for them…CivicPlus, Cardinal Tracking and even some dude named Neil Cardwell are all on record as sending bills for IT work to “MW” over the years.  Here’s another one:

Server migration is just moving data from one server to another.  Kind of like I move damning financial photos from my phone to this blog – little did I know that was worth $150 an hour.  MW and her entire IT “department” didn’t know how to move data from one server to another??  Mind-boggling.

So, it appears the job description for IT Director is

  1. Show up to the office…post some Facebook crap on personal page
  2. Find a consultant to do anything harder than change a printer cartridge
  3. Sign “MW” after job is complete (complain during 2-hour lunch that you have hand cramps)
  4. Take three weeks paid vacation.
  5. Drive to Dallas.  Look at their City Council chambers.  Drive home.
  6. Go to a couple of City Council meetings and pick the “monthly website photo contest” winner.  Bat eyelashes at City Council.
  7. Throw away the competitive $34,000 A/V system bid.  Replace with $100,000 A/V system.
  8. Make sure you take all 10 sick days….you earned it.  Kinda.
  9. Collect fat check and year end “appreciation pay” from Finley, as soon as he takes break from setting $1,500,000.00 on fire over at Old City Hall.
  10. Annual get together with Finley, Gary and Kristy…create $500,000 money pile and jump around in it while laughing heartily at suckers taxpayers.
  11. Repeat for a few more years and then collect fat pension

Must be sweet!  Good thing there are thousands of suckers citizens out there paying that property tax bill every November!