Oddly, in addition to the $72,000 in ‘free’ hookups, Finney was ALSO handed $33,324 in tax dollars “for drainage improvements his contractor will make on Westridge Place…” [see page 10 in Lampasas Dispatch].
So lemme get this straight. The City hands Deorald $33,324 to “improve drainage on Westridge”. NOW there are drainage issues on Fairview – which is literally less than two blocks over.
Gee. I wonder if the two are related! Zac Morris was the only council member to even question this massive expense for a STUDY. The other braindead council members like Williamson, Monroe and Kuehne just whipped out their rubber stamps and wrote the checks.
Do you think the City had any clawback provisions in that “agreement” with Finney when they handed him over $100,000 in taxpayer dollars?? Maybe a clause that says “if you sell these things for a ridiculous windfall profit, you give us our $100,000 back”?
Hell no. Finney is going to see a roughly $2.5 million windfall from this deal. This is typical when idiot politicians like TJ Monroe, Chuck Williamson and Misti Talbert get involved in handing out subsidies: any profits are privatized and go into the pockets of developers. Any losses are eaten by the taxpayers.
That’s why they live in mansions while Talbert and Monroe have trouble adding 2+2 together.
Once again, we see proof the Talbert administration (along with TJ Monroe, and Chuck Williamson) was a colossal failure and waster of tax dollars.
Misti is gone as mayor, but don’t let out any sighs of relief. She is now running the LEDC….into the ground, as it looks from my point of view.
He’s the guy who actually had the nerve to ask City council to waive pretty much every building fee they charge (loss of about $31,000 to City coffers) AND to provide free electrical hookups to each house – at a cost to the City of $72,000. Oh, and to hand over another $53,000 or so for other drainage/street stuff (3/29/19 front page).
City council nitwits TJ Monroe and Chuck Williamson voted to give him every single break he asked for (don’t forget that Chuck is up for re-election very soon!). They lost that vote 2-5.
Luckily, cooler heads prevailed and they only gave him everything he wantedMINUS waiving all building permits [5-2 vote – see Dispatch from 3/29/19 front page article]. Monroe and Williamson voted against the reduced package since they wanted to hand MORE free stuff to Finney.
I recall Mike White’s common-sense statement back in the 3/29/19 edition of the Dispatch (page 11): “If I’m building a house, I don’t get a fee waived”.
Bravo, sir. Monroe and Williamson don’t see it that way, apparently.
As early as July 17th, 2018 (page 10), Talbert was fine with handing out the $72,000 in candy. Her logic? The city would be willing to consider “doing the electric [infrastructure] at our cost because [it is] an enterprise for us; we do sell electric service.”
No shit? Then why does the City have a hookup fee at all for anybody?? Everyone else buys electric service too!
When Deorald was arguing for all the sweetheart deals, he said the houses would sell for between $150k and $180k (1/4/19 page 10):
“Finney estimated home prices would range from $150,000-$180,000”.
Hmmm. Weird, because one of them is currently listed at over $200,000 right now. Link here.
That $200k is THIRTY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS MORE per house than the mid-point estimate he gave to the City. Multiply that by 67 houses and you are looking at over $2.3 million extra windfall dollars in Deorald’s pocket. Good thing the City handed him all that free shit. If they hadn’t done that, he may have been forced to live in a puny 5,000 square foot hovel….instead of the opulent mansion he is currently bragging about on Facebook:
Poor guy. Barely scraping by selling those Stone Valley houses. Without that $72,000 fee waiver from Misti and The Gang, he might have to live in a house WITHOUT corbels! The horror.
I sure hope City council gets invited over for the mansionwarming party! Or maybe get invited on a trip to Hawaii or something. Anything to show his thanks for City council being such suckers with City money.
$72,000 buys some nice trips to Hawaii, doesn’t it??
Here is a video of developers grabbing City of Lampasas tax dollars over the last few years. If you look closely, you can see Deorald and “Greasy” Chris Harrison in there!
Between March 16 and March 23, page views of online listings for homes in rural areas increased 115% compared to the same period in 2019, according to Redfin analyst Tim Ellis. Page views of homes in small towns were up 88%.
In 2016, residential construction in Lampasas spiked to 47 new homes from 21 in 2015. From 2012 to 2015, the city added 15.75 homes each year, on average, and from 2016 to 2019 it added an average of 40.25 annually. By May 31 this year, the city had added 17 new houses. If that pace continues through Dec. 31, the city would gain 41 new houses this calendar year. Property values have risen with new construction. From 2012 to 2015, the value of single family houses on lots approximately 2 acres and smaller increased an average of 2% annually. From 2016 to 2019, they grew 4.3% each year, on average.
Well. Sounds like people are flocking to Central Texas from EVERYWHERE…. which anyone with a brain knew was happening for YEARS now. It is CERTAINLY not the type of environment where the City should be handing out HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF TAX DOLLARSUBSIDIES to ‘encourage growth’, does it?
Yet that’s EXACTLY what the morons on City council did. Repeatedly.
Great job, City council! What will you do for your next trick? Maybe give a $200,000 subsidy to Wal-Mart? I hear they are really struggling over there!
I did some ranting last year about City council waiving electrical hookup fees for rich developer Deorald Finney – which cost the City approximately $72,000 in lost fees [5/21/19 page 10]. City council (most of whom are reliant on the taxpayer for their OWN salaries and only one of whom has an inkling of the real business world) was in such a huge rush to “promote development” that they just gave away the farm for no reason at all.
Proof they did the wrong thing comes today in the latest Dispatch (5/28/20 page 7) – where we learn that while everyone else was forced to stay in their homes like scared rabbits this spring – and many business were wrecked and jobs lost – Stone Valley was just chugging right along on their construction.
In fact, according to the article: “Danielle Sheppard, a Lampasas resident who works for Coldwell Banker: ‘We are definitely in a seller’s market.‘ The supply of available homes has had a hard time keeping up with the demand for housing as more people flock to Central Texas.”
How nice! Deorald will have no problem selling his houses for TOP DOLLAR…and he gets an extra $72k to boot, thanks to the dummies on City council!
Of course, Deorald is not only helped by City council handing him free shit, he’s also helped by the morons at the Federal Reserve who have pegged rates at zero (yet again) in order to screw savers and encourage reckless borrowing. I guess it pays to have the largest lobbying group in Washington DC.
Like the civic center, the Tree Police idea is apparently one of those turds that just refuse to stay buried. It has come up AGAIN at the last two City council meetings.
I previously went into what hypocrites some of the Goldfish are for even dreaming up this idea: they hand out “free” stuff (Stone Valley development electrical hookups: $70,000) and gobs of taxpayer money (S2M2 and former Council member: $150,000) to developers then get their panties in a bunch when the developers go out and cut down trees – which is kind of necessary when putting in roads, houses, ponds, etc.
The trees that used to be here don’t count, as they were ripped out by a developer whom City Council blessed with $70,000 in ‘free’ electrical hookups, as well as tens of thousands of other gifts to ‘promote growth’!
The very next meeting after I pointed out the hypocrisy on these pages, Delena Toups (who is the mastermind of this idea) made sure to throw in that she is only talking about COMMERCIAL development and not RESIDENTIAL. Clearly she reads here regularly. It’s unfortunate she didn’t learn anything from the wisdom on these pages.
I guess that makes it ok then, eh? Ripping down, say, fifty trees for residential development is ok but ripping down two trees for commercial development is BAD BAD BAD! Makes total sense if you are a Goldfish, I suppose. Out here in the real world, however, a tree is a tree.
These trees don’t count either! City council handed their FORMER fellow council member ‘Greasy’ Chris Harrison’s developer buddy S2M2 $150,000 to help pay for bulldozers.
[I guess her head is REALLY gonna explode once Pope Eckermann or a future tenant (LOL!) gets into the corpse repository ‘business park’ and has to start removing trees to build all the big buildings to house all those ‘high tech jobs’ Mandy Walsh dreams of at night.]
Sorry, I just cannot type that with a straight face.
So already they are backpedaling so as to not look completely ridiculous by previously subsidizing (with tax dollars) the very behavior they are now upset about.
But it gets worse.
Enter Sandy Tompkins at the last City council meeting on Feb 10th. Yet another person with zero respect for (or understanding of) property rights or economic incentives.
First she informs us she was a school teacher for 33 years. Not sure what that has to do with the price of tea in China. Just one of my pet peeves: I don’t care how many years anybody taught grade school. Doesn’t make you any smarter than anyone else. Oftentimes quite the opposite, in my vast experience.
Then she tells us a kind of sob story about how a lady who sold some property to developers (on Central Texas Expressway) didn’t want to sell it because she was afraid the developer would take out trees. Of course, she DID sell it and the trees WERE taken out – which is why she is telling this sad, sad story.
Um, sugar plum?? That’s what ‘selling’ means. You transfer all rights to that property and now have ZERO say in what subsequently gets done with it. If you love the trees so much, then feel free to choose them over the money. But she didn’t. She wanted the money. And the REASON the money was so good, is because they are going to develop it commercially. You would not have gotten anywhere NEAR the amount of cash you got if it was just sold so some tree-hugger who wanted to gaze at the trees all day long. You made a choice. Don’t cry about it now.
Sandy tells us she’s “a private property rights person”….but then she spends the next six and a half minutes proving otherwise by championing the tree police.
She continues blah, blah, blah for the next few minutes. Then her bright idea towards the end [51:38 mark] is “we need to let developers know that we care about trees in this community”, but then immediately admits “I don’t know how you put teeth into this and still have private property rights”.
BINGO!! EXACTLY. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. It’s quite simple. That should be the end of discussion. Bye bye Tree Police.
But of course, it’s not. All the do-gooders love to hear the sound of their own voices and let everyone know how much they CARE. Much like the bleeding heart liberal lefties who whine about how we need more ‘free’ health care for everyone so the answer is to steal from one group and give to another. If they REALLY cared, they would go to medical school and become doctors and work for peanuts. But that’s HARD and requires WORK and SACRIFICE. Better to just boss everyone else around. But I digress….
Their answer to everything is more rules, more regulations, more enforcement. Kinda like the Tree Police.
So here is the Lampasshole Free Market Solution to this perceived problem – free of charge:
(1) People can do whatever they want with their property. Period.
(2) MOST people (I’d say 97%) value trees highly, or we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Therefore, it is in the DEVELOPER’S best interest to keep as many trees as possible since it INCREASES the value of the property (people’s desire for trees leads them to choose a property with many trees over a property with none – that preference shows up in market prices).
(3) STOP handing tax dollars to developers to subsidize their activities. You are distorting the free market. Some of these developments are extremely marginal and YOU DUMMIES handing them $150,000 in tax dollar subsidies might be just the push it takes to make them ‘profitable’. The ‘market clearing’ number of developments would be slightly lower without these distortions caused by YOU…and less trees are then destroyed.
You dummies still with me?
So far, the free market is taking care of incentives. But some people want MORE trees to replace the ones that HAD to be removed. I have an answer for that too:
Go plant some damn trees!! I wonder how many trees Delena Toups or Sandy Tompkins or any other Tree Police Cheerleaders have actually planted themselves in the last 10 years. Zero? Nobody is stopping you from planting a boatload of trees on the land you own. Go ahead and do it! Maybe offer to plant a tree or six on your neighbors property for free.
Ah, but that’s hard! It costs some money and takes some effort. How do I know this? Well, not to toot my own horn, but I have planted over 45 trees on my property since I bought it 8.5 years ago. That’s probably 45 more trees than all the Tree Police Cheerleaders have planted combined.
It cost me a chunk and was hard work to keep them watered in the summer those first few years. Digging holes, mulching, fertilizing, pruning, and running hoses all over the place….it kinda sucks. But, you see, I value trees also. I just don’t show that by puffing out my chest and standing at the microphone telling other people what to do with their property. Instead I think “hmmm….I like trees. I’ll plant some more on my land.”
I also built my house in such a spot as to not remove a single tree. Did I do this because Delana Toups or Sandy Tompkins and the Tree Police types demanded it? No. I acted on my own free will due to economic incentives. Imagine that!!
Unfortunately, instead of this terrible idea dying a quick death, the City council geniuses are thinking of taking it to a Town Hall meeting so the likes of Janet-Yoder-Kraeff-Crozier-Thunberg and other morons can cheer for it as well.
I can’t wait to see the abomination that results from all this pearl clutching. Should be something to behold.
The entire property looks like a tornado hit it – splintered oak tree remnants everywhere. They DID leave that one single tree standing in the back ground there…so there’s that.
This one below kinda looks like a future water detention pond to me…the one the City handed S2M2 $150,000 for, after their former Council member ‘Greasy’ Chris Harrison was hired to beg them for it. Note the massive amounts of roots and splintered wood – this likely indicates destroyed trees, by my estimation:
Don’t even get me started on Deorald Finney and Stone Valley. I don’t think he left more than a tree or two standing – remember, the City gave him over $70,000 in ‘free’ electrical hookups, plus a bunch of dough for other stuff:
Just another example of ‘Goldfish Economics’: subsidize certain behavior and then get confused when that behavior increases.
