Background
So I've been relatively quiet for a few months. City Council has been largely busy conducting routine business, and nothing of note has really come up. However, I can no longer remain silent. Now that our illustrious mayor has decided to manipulate social media in addition to traditional media to spread the liberal Green Team propaganda, I must speak out. Let's talk about the Mayor's fancy new office. It wasn't enough that the Mayor bullied the new City Manager to give him his own office (because he doesn't have an actual job like our Mayor is supposed to have, since it's a position with a $12,000 per year stipend, not a full-time salary), no, that wasn't enough. He decided that the furniture which was provided, which has been good enough for all of our city staff, wasn't fancy enough for his glorious ego. And now that the rest of council has finally started to challenge this waste of money, he hopped on Facebook to throw a tantrum in an attempt to control public opinion. He casually slips in the cost of redecorating his office (greater than $13,000 - we'll get to that in a bit) as if it's no big deal, then attempts to use Hurricane Harvey as an excuse to avoid justifying his extravagance. Here's the mayor's post (which he has since deleted after being challenged by citizens on the lack of tact and wastefulness):
Hallisey's Own Words (from Facebook)
As many of you may remember the first year of my time in office, Mark Roher [sic] the city manager, councilman long and a few others denied me from getting a office. Many members of public and county and state leaders as well as business prospects did the city business on conference rooms. It took the firing of The city manager for not doing his job for this foolishness to come to an end. I spent 40-50 hours a week working to make this community better.Now those that worked so hard against my efforts showed up for council meeting once every two weeks, absolutely never showed one once [sic] of leadership in this community.
How many of you ever saw Dan Becker or Nick Long out in the neighborhoods in the thick of the storm or even see either of them at the emergency offering or lending support to first responders responsders?
Well here is their and their political operatives petty claims after the storm.
Politics at the expense of you and that have been devastated.
Becker and leg petty beyond belief!!!
As requested by a Councilmember, please find attached the itemized breakdown of costs associated with furnishing ($13,284.04) the Mayor's office earlier this year. In addition to the direct out of pocket costs there was some staff time used to repaint the office/conference room that was not captured in the detail. The existing conference table was repurposed and used in the Civic Center to create some small break out meeting type space.
This is what these two and the attorney do while your trash doesn't get picked up.
You decide
Shameless Waste of Resources - Your Tax Dollars at Work
Now, let's start by ignoring the fact that our illustrious mayor is at best semi-literate. We'll ignore the countless grammatical errors, misspellings, and general lack of writing ability. And while we're at it, we'll ignore that he copied and pasted an email from the City Manager to the Council and posted it all over Facebook. Let's analyze the really important things- Lack of tact. This is the mayor who promised to end the petty politics. This post itself is complaining about "petty claims". And yet, it's the mayor himself who is on social media airing dirty laundry, making petty claims of playing politics, and implicating the city attorney in some supposed nefarious conspiracy. Claiming the attorney was involved in this borders on defamation unless the mayor has some sort of proof. And shouldn't our mayor rise above this sort of public shaming of our city employees? There's only one word to describe this entire post - unprofessional. I would expect more from a life-long politician. As the Kelley's put it back when the Mayor was still running for office - this is "bad at being bad".
- Glossing over the cost! The mayor is so out of touch with reality and the common citizen of this city that he thinks spending more than his annual stipend on decorating his office is justified. I don't know about y'all, but I certainly don't have $13,000 of furniture in my office! (I'm not even sure I have $13,000 of furniture in my entire house!) Here's some pictures of the mayor's office with his see-no-evil supporters celebrating this waste of money.
Now, I'll ignore the hideous colors here (won't that be lovely for our next mayor to have to see this, as a constant reminder to not waste city resources the way Pat Hallisey has?). But look at those prices - $950 for signs so that the mayor can emphasize his displeasure with the actual city logo? How do you justify $1254 for those ugly chairs?
Look at all those people the mayor has duped into thinking this was a good use of resources! I left Greg Gripon and Sandra Kelley's faces in the picture, since they've injected themselves so deeply into the public discourse of this waste. To think - they both claim to be "Republicans". Was this a good use of money? Your tax dollars at work, League City!Some of the items weren't visible in photos, so I've attached the actual breakout of expenses provided by the city:3. Incomplete Reporting - The Mayor and/or City Manager hid some of the cost by not reporting the labor expenses for painting the office. But that's not the biggest scandal here. One LARGE cost is not addressed. The Mayor had a special executive chair brought in for his desk, complete with a gold Oak Tree logo on the backrest. We don't know how much this chair cost because the cost wasn't reported here. Why isn't this cost reported? Was there creative accounting involved to hide the expense? Well Mr. Mayor, we expect an answer (feel free to use Facebook since you've gotten so good at using social media). Here's a snap from one of the mayor's live videos showing the chair that is NOT included in this itemized listing. So, mayor, just how much of OUR money did you waste on this silly chair with gold decoration?4. Hurricane Harvey Excuse - The Mayor then tries to throw people off the scent of this absolute waste of resources by attempting to tie this inquiry regarding his luxurious spending spree by complaining (and getting his usual band of useful idiot supporters to speak up with similar comments on social media) that this is being done "while your trash isn't being picked up" after Hurricane Harvey. Now, last I checked, our council does NOT hand-collect storm debris and trash. Last I checked, we voted these people into office to effectively manage our tax dollars. And to complain about the "timing" of the inquiry is nothing more than a pathetic attempt to shift discussion off the wasteful spending. One could, just as easily, throw this argument back at the mayor, "When our city is struggling to avoid raising taxes, with a budget full of supposed 'needs' that includes a tax increase in effect by not decreasing the tax rate to offset the average increased appraisal value, our Mayor is instead spending money on shopping sprees to decorate a fancy office for himself". The "timing" argument does NOT invalidate the importance of this inquiry. If you're wasting money on furniture and decorations for your totally unnecessary office - where else are you wasting OUR money?5. Spreading Lies About Other Councilmembers - In what is NOTHING short of defamation, and for which I hope Mr. Long pursues legal consequences, the Mayor lied that his detractors have done nothing post-Harvey to help the people impacted during the storm. Unfortunately for Pat, at the very least Mr. Long WAS volunteering at shelters after the storm, as witnessed by hundreds of people. And unlike the mayor, who was bouncing from photo opportunity to photo opportunity, accomplishing no actual work, Mr. Long was witnessed ACTUALLY working at the shelter. Furthermore, while the mayor is posing for pictures at Peggy Zahler's house for the Galveston Daily News, Mr. Long and Mr. Becker have been fighting to get appraisals lowered after the storm.