Tag: TJ Monroe

Look How Much Money the LEDC Has Squandered Over The Last Six Years

Sickening.

That’s the only way to describe the utter waste of tax dollars called the “Lampasas Economic Development Corporation”. After seeing the latest figures (10/1/19 through 9/30/20), I decided to go over the previous five filings as well. The following totals are the amounts wasted by the LEDC in JUST the last six fiscal years (10/1/14 through 9/30/20):

INTEREST PAYMENTS: $327,173 That is money that goes straight into the pockets of the banks for the privilege of borrowing money to “improve” the ‘goat pasture’ (former councilman Mike White’s words, not mine) known as The Business Park. That is $327,173 in tax dollars that will not be used for parks, streets or swimming pools. It is gone forever. Misti Talbert and TJ Monroe (among others) are directly responsible for this.

LEGAL FEES: $93,237 How the LEDC managed to blow nearly a hundred grand on legal fees for a “business park” that has sat empty for 17 years is beyond my comprehension. Perhaps the idiots who run the LEDC can comprehend it (Talbert, Monroe, etc), but I cannot. Some lawyer out there has a nice new boat, no doubt. Citizens of Lampasas have nothing to show for it.

ADMIN/OVERHEAD: $72,000 The LEDC spend exactly $12,000 per year on administration/overhead. Year in and year out. It appears it is paid to the City – perhaps for consulting their accountants and wasting City time. But I really couldn’t tell you. More money vaporized.

ADVERTISING/PROMOTION: $31,389 The LEDC has somehow spent over $30,000 promoting and advertising their “business park”. What exactly are they advertising and promoting? A goat pasture (Mike White’s words, not mine) with tumbleweeds and cactus all over it? Whatever they spent it on, the ‘business park’ STILL sits empty after 17 years.

TRAVEL: $31,205 The LEDC has blown over $30,000 on “travel” over those six years. While $5,000 per year might not sound like a lot in the grand scheme of things, I have to wonder why it isn’t $0. Where exactly do these dunces need to travel to and why? What was gained by it? Clearly not any tenants for the goat pasture (Mike White’s words, not mine). Anyways, somebody got a lot of nice little useless junkets. The taxpayers got the bill.

FURTHERMORE – all this money is being thrown around with next to ZERO controls or oversight. I have covered repeatedly how Misti Talbert and TJ Monroe essentially oversaw their own activities by holding positions on the LEDC and City council (as MAYORS!) at the same time. It is a very incestuous and inbred group of dummies.

This group ALSO: (1) has no written whistleblower policies, (2) has no written conflict of interest policies and (2) has no written document retention and/or document destruction policy.

Add all that up? You have a small group of insulated, inbred, low-IQ people with next to zero oversight handling millions of tax dollars who are not accountable for their results. The predictable outcome is exactly the one that has been taking place over the last 17 years: millions of dollars wasted and nothing to show for it.

Disband the LEDC. Eliminate the Director of Economic Development position. Let the free market preside.

TJ Monroe To Be Sworn In

Monday night will begin the era of TJ Monroe as mayor of Lampasas. TJ stands for “Total Joke”, as we will unfortunately see between now and May of 2023.

I foresee a LOT of grist for my mill over the next two years. This woman has literally been on the exact WRONG side of every issue both on City council AND the LEDC for ten years now. The wrong side means she ALWAYS votes to spend massive amounts of money on dubious projects and NEVER asks any important questions about it.

That’s pretty hard to do. Even the old saying about a broken clock being right twice a day doesn’t apply to her. I will never EVER forgive her and Williamson for voting to give Deorald Finney a TON of free stuff a couple years ago – the same Finney who is now selling his 67 houses for a HUGE profit thanks to the tsunami of Big City locusts now trying to escape their liberal shit holes like Elko, Nevada…Austin, TX and Norton, Ohio.

TJ and Chuck EVEN voted to WAIVE ALL BUILDING PERMIT FEES for Finney as well! Luckily, they were in the minority and Finney “only” got ‘free’ electrical hookups for all his houses (worth $72,000). If TJ and the other Goldfish had any brains, they would go back to Finney (who is currently building a mansion with all his riches) and try to claw back that $72,000.

Same goes for the $185,000 they handed to former City council chum “Greasy” Chris Harrison over at S2M2 (yet another developer) for Brodie Estates.

In honor of this special occasion, I wrote a limerick for TJ:

There once was a mayor named Monroe

Whose IQ was frighteningly low

Her only two skills

Are racking up bills

And squandering taxpayer dough

TJ Monroe Wins Mayoral Spot

As a dog returns to his vomit, so doth a fool return to his folly….and my, there are a lot of fools (310, to be exact) repeating the folly of sending TJ Monroe back to City council – this time as mayor. A position she is completely unqualified to hold.

The GOOD news is that I am guaranteed two more years of poor decision making and profligate spending to ridicule.

The BAD news is YOU suckers are gonna pay for it!

Two more years of handing hundreds of thousands of dollars to developers, more developers and Pope Eckermann for the doomed “business” park.

Two more years of paying $96,000 for a $34,000 system. Two more years of shelling out $180,000 for a bathroom that could have been built for $20,000 (page 7).

Two more years of selling a building for $75,000 and then buying it back 15 months later for $229,000. Yes – that really happened. Then they spent $1.5 million renovating it! TJ Monroe was right in the thick of that idiocy, voting YES to all of it.

Two more years of pouring millions into the failed “business” park. Two more years of being tricked and suckered by con men like Mike Cour.

Oughta be a lot of fun!

TJ Monroe & Chuck Williamson: Making Expensive Shitty Decisions Since July 2013

Chuck Williamson has been involved in City decision making in one way or another (CIP Committee, council) since the early 1990s. TJ Monroe has been doing the same for at least 10 years as a council member and LEDC member.

I would argue it’s time for both of them to hang up the cleats and go play golf or bingo or something. They have both left a trail of money wasting, bad ideas, and idiotic predictions in their wake.

Unfortunately, Williamson just wormed his way BACK into the seat he lost last November, so we are stuck with that clown for another year or so.

BUT, we have a chance to vote TJ Monroe out once and for all this May as she runs for mayor against local businessman Myles Haider.

Let’s take a look at just ONE snapshot from July of 2013 to prove how badly TJ and Chuck have managed things over the years.

From the July 2, 2103 Lampasas Dispatch:

“Also at the recent meeting, the council discussed selling, reusing or moving unoccupied city buildings. The council decided to sell the former City Hall at the corner of Main and Third streets. Mrs. Monroe and Mrs. Bierschwale
said they can envision a private buyer refurbishing the building nicely,
possibly for use as upscale apartments.

Translation: On the advice of the CIP (of which Chuck Williamson was a member at the time), City council – including TJ Monroe – decided to sell the old City Hall building for a measly $75,000!

At the VERY SAME TIME, City council was sitting around saying “gee…we need a new council chambers!” and they were budgeting $250,000 for the project.

From the VERY SAME ISSUE of the Dispatch:

“Several City council members said they would like to consider funding for a new council chambers — estimated to cost $250,000 — in the upcoming fiscal year. “We need it [a larger meeting space] as soon as we can get it — I’ll put it that way,” said McCauley, who serves on the CIP Committee”

So in one breath, these idiots said “we need a place for a new council chambers” and then ALSO said “hey, let’s sell this old building we aren’t using for a pittance!”

What ACTUALLY ended up happening??

There was no “private buyer” to magically turn the building into “upscale apartments” like the monumentally mentally impaired TJ Monroe dreamed about! No…what happened was the morons on City council BOUGHT BACK that very same building for $225,000 just over a year later!!

They THEN spent roughly $1,500,000.00 to “renovate” this building and turn it into a new City council chambers. Thus spending 500% MORE than they were considering spending! ($250k versus $1.5 million).

[Note: the Old City Hall debacle included a $96,000 no-bid A/V system: a screw-up SO egregious it prompted me to start this blog. Not to mention a wildly overpriced elevator that breaks down constantly!]

Did anyone show any regret, remorse or shame for bungling things so horrendously? Hell no! Chuck Williamson was PROUD of his genius idea to sell the old building for a song. He said so in the June 10, 2014 issue of The Dispatch:

“He added that the Capital Improvements Program Committee has shown
foresight with recent plans — such as its suggestion, which the council followed, of selling unused city-owned buildings. The longtime CIP member
said he hopes the committee’s quarterly meetings will help identify both current and future needs for Lampasas.”

We are stuck with Williamson for a short while longer, I’m afraid. But YOU have the chance to get RID of TJ Monroe this May. She has proven over and over that she has no idea what she’s doing, no common sense and NO respect for the taxpayer’s money.

Vote Myles Haider for Mayor of the City of Lampasas.

$10 Plastic Owl – The Best Candidate For City Council Place Six.

Hello folks!

I’m running for Place 6 on Lampasas City council. The seat is currently held by TJ Monroe. Did you realize she has been on City council AND the LEDC board for at least TEN YEARS!

Sure, I may be made of plastic, but I won’t be any worse than TJ Monroe!

How do I know?

  1. I will never vote to spend $96,000 for a no-bid audio/visual system when we already agreed to spend $34,000 with another company!
  2. I won’t piss away $1.5 million remodeling a building like Old City Hall.
  3. I’ll never vote to waste $180,000 on a public bathroom in a park.
  4. I’ll never vote to spend $128,800 on an elevator when we can buy one for $96,000
  5. I’ll never vote to hand $72,000 in free electrical hookups to a rich developer whose newly-built houses are fetching 15% more than he estimated.
  6. I’ll never vote to hand $185,000 to one of my former council members for HIS housing development either [page 32 check #158087]
  7. I’ll never vote to spend another penny on the idiotic business park. All that park is good for is hunting mice and snakes. I love to hunt there, but TOTALLY not worth $4 million dollars.

Pretty much all I will do is sit there doing nothing – thereby NOT wasting tax money. I will never break this promise – mainly because I am a nocturnal bird of prey and therefore sleep all day – making me pretty unobtrusive during City council meetings.

For maximum effectiveness, you can move me around the room occasionally.

Please follow me on Gab.com at TenDollarPlasticOwl.

Thank you and God bless America.

Hey Hey! Ho Ho! TJ Monroe! You’ve Got To GO!!!

City council member TJ Monroe has been sitting on council wreaking ruinous spending havoc for AT LEAST TEN YEARS! She has also been on the LEDC board for AT LEAST TEN YEARS.

NOBODY has hung around that long. Go back and look at City council members from 10 years ago – there is TJ Monroe plus a bunch of names who are now long gone.

Time to hang up the cleats, lady. Go play bingo, watch Matlock and enjoy your remaining years.

I say “at least” because city council minutes are only posted back to 2013 and LEDC minutes are only posted back to 2016. She is shown in all the minutes going back that far for both organizations.

So I had to find a way to search farther back.

I then did a Lampasas Dispatch archive search for TJ Monroe: the earliest mention of her is as a council member in the 5/13/11 issue – which will be TEN YEARS AGO when her term ends this May!!

I ACTUALLY searched all the way back to Jan 1, 2009 – but she only first pops up in the 5/13/11 issue and she’s already a council member at that point.

I am thinking that even the Dispatch archives don’t go back far enough to find out when she joined council and LEDC!

Ironically, the very first issue that mentions her is an article about how she voted to approve a grant application for a developer! Not much has changed in 10 years, has it TJ? You still think money grows on trees and you still hand out tax dollars to any clown who asks.

For the love of God, SOMEBODY throw their hat in the ring to run against this woman. Even if she were a smart and savvy member of council (which she most certainly is not), ten years is too long for ANYONE to be in that position. Being on the LEDC concurrently makes it even worse. She has done twice the damage that way.

The mayoral post and City council Place 1, Place 2 and Place 6 will be up for election May 1, according to City Secretary Becky Sims.

Misti Talbert is the mayor. Delana Toups holds Place 1, Randy Clark holds Place 5, and TJ Monroe holds Place 6.

Candidates must be at least 21 years old and citizens and qualified voters of Texas and Lampasas. They must have resided in the city for at least 12 consecutive months preceding election day.

Candidates may file in person at City Hall: 312 E Third St.

Candidates may send applications to City Secretary, 312 E. Third St., Lampasas, TX 76550 to file by mail.

TJ Monroe Five Year Anniversary Of Being Wrong About Business Park

Another jog down memory lane….five years ago today in the Lampasas Dispatch. As a reminder, the corpse repository ‘business park’ still sits there an empty weed patch and TJ STILL sits on City council making poor decisions:

“Mrs. Monroe noted the Lampasas Economic Development Corp. is working with the business park south of town on U.S. Highway 183, and she said she hopes the site will attract good employers to Lampasas. [Council member TJ Monroe] – April 14, 2015

It has, in fact, attracted ZERO employers…good OR bad. The bill for that boondoggle is in the millions of dollars. It still looks like a useless weed patch and is nowhere NEAR ready.

These are the same people that think their judgement is so sound, they can ‘help’ local businesses during the Chinese virus scare. Ummmm….ok, sure.

TJ Monroe: AC-wise and A/V-foolish

Yes, the headline is my little play on “penny wise and pound foolish”, but when it comes to The Seven Goldfish, it’s truly more like “foolish all the time,” when it comes to spending money. Also, the headline should be titled “A-foolish” since there is no ‘V’ (video) to be seen with the new $95,000 no-bid audio/visual system screw job. But I digress….

Recently, a few of the goldfish had a minor squabble about a bid for a new air conditioning unit for the Hostess House. Three bids were received (all in the same $5000 to $6000 price range) but Mike White wanted to go with the most expensive. If you read the details [see below], his decision makes sense. The warranty was better and the bid was more detailed. This should have been one of those things City Council passes in 30 seconds, since the difference between bids was a measly $1,000. Given the difference in warranties, I would say that is fair compensation.

But TJ Monroe was having none of it. As you can see from the Dispatch article below, she chose THIS hill to inexplicably die on. I mean, seriously, she is worried over a few hundred bucks for an AC unit, but last year she was part of the Dream Team that waved through a $95,000 NO-BID audio/visual system without so much as a peep!

TJ was also sitting on Council earlier this year when Spinley deGraffenreid informed the Council he would be spending $185,000 on another no-bid project: an unneeded bathroom in Campbell Park!

So, to recap for the people on the short bus and in the IT Department:

(1) A few hundred bucks on an AC system: TJ Monroe squawks and wastes council time with picking nits.

(2) $95,000 no-bid a/v system that had PREVIOUSLY been bid and accepted for $34,000 (a difference of SIXTY THOUSAND DOLLARS): TJ Monroe is as quiet as a church mouse

(3) $185,000 no-bid bathroom for a project the Parks Department head pitched a couple years earlier for $105,000 (a difference of EIGHTY THOUSAND DOLLARS): TJ Monroe is as quiet as a fart in a flour sack.

It’s also hilarious that they put a $5,000 AC unit up for bid but NOT a $95,000 or $185,000 project. Talk about flying upside down with your head up your butt.

I’m not going to dump on Clark, because he wasn’t around last year when the Azbell debacle slipped through Council. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he would have likely raised a stink about it.

Here is the Dispatch article with all the details:

On another agenda item, the council voted to pay All Seasons Service Inc. to replace a 5-ton heating, ventilation and air-conditioning unit at the Hancock Springs Hostess House.

The city received quotes of $4,800 from TexAir HVAC Inc., $5,298 from Miller’s Service Co. and $5,850 from All Seasons Service Inc. Those are all Lampasas companies.

Councilman Mike White said he does not think the bids are comparable, as he said All Seasons’ quote is much more detailed than the others.

When Mayor Pro Tem TJ Monroe asked White what questions he wants resolved, White said he wants to be sure city officials are “comparing apples to apples,” particularly in regard to the electrical phase and Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio rating.

White also noted All Seasons’ warranty — listed on the quote sheet as 10 years for the compressor, two years for labor and seven years for parts, with online registration. TexAir’s quote listed a five-year parts warranty, and Miller’s bid does not contain warranty information.

White said the Hostess House has had extensive air-conditioning problems, and he alluded to multiple service calls in recent years.

“So there’s [about] a thousand dollars’ difference between the most expensive and the cheapest, and you’re of the opinion that the warranty itself is worth that extra thousand dollars?” Monroe asked White.

The councilman responded: “And the detailed professionalism of the estimate, yes.”

Councilman Randy Clark said he does not believe city officials asked the companies for particular specifications on the HVAC quotes.

White said he talked to Parks Department Director Chris Eicher and learned that representatives of all three contractors met with Eicher at the Hostess House about the work the city needs to have done.

“And I can’t vote for the lowest bid when it’s not comparing [to] any of the other bids,” White said.

Clark asked White if he “would live with” a motion to delay action and seek new bids.

White said he does not think it is the city’s responsibility to have the companies submit new, more detailed bids for the HVAC unit replacement. He said the companies have worked on jobs for the city before and “know full well what to do.”

A motion by Clark to award the HVAC unit replacement to TexAir failed for lack of a second.

White moved to award the job to All Seasons. That motion passed 5-1, with Clark opposed