Month: November 2015

Championship Week

I hope everyone had a good holiday. I’m digging out after taking a five day holiday break that also included some healthy doses of the IT Infrastructure upgrades that I’ve been yammering about lately. Speaking of yammering, on Friday nights for the past 14 weeks the Slabbed New Media twitter account has been covering High School football and those Friday night light tweets gets more social engagement than all the rest combined. Next year, I’ll likely create a dedicated twitter account for sports but until then we have one more week of High School football coming this weekend at the State Championship games in Oxford at Ole Miss.

First up is the Lawrence County paper’s story on last Friday night’s game, which had a nice Easter egg in for us:

Erik Handshoe squares off against Lawrence County's Will Thurman in the South State Championship game 11-28-15
Erik Handshoe squares off against Lawrence County’s Will Thurman in the South State Championship game 11-28-15. Photo by Marty Albright | The Daily Leader

St Stanislaus Ends Lawrence County’s Season ~ Marty Albright

Next week the O-Line gets another step up in competition:

SEC programs continue to pursue Noxubee County’s Simmons ~ Courtney Cronin Continue reading “Championship Week”

“They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance”

Indeed they do but I’m a bit jaded by prior auditing experience. Speaking of that how about another quote to go with the Edmund Burke quote in the post title.

There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don’t know. ~ Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

Next up put under the Old Town Trolley by Hizzoner is the City’s former audit firm:

Where’s the DOJ money? Feds issue report on Bay St. Louis’ missing $298K ~ Wes Muller

No folks, this is not a bad rerun of the Singing River Health System financial meltdown because the root cause of the problem is easier to trace here in Bay St Louis.  Sources inside City Hall not authorized to speak with the media have repeatedly indicated to Slabbed New Media that the check which closed the bank account holding the Equitable Sharing funds was drafted less than 6 months after Mayor Fillingame first took office. The check to close the dedicated bank account and co-mingle the funds was written by former City Comptroller Katherine Smith and signed by Mayor Fillingame. This transaction was subsequently journalized into the City’s General Fund book of accounts by former City Clerk David Kolf before being expended on things such as fancy street lights for Old Town.

This is not particularly innovative form of administrative fraud folks. You never co-mingle dedicated funds and the former City Clerk should have made that clear to Hizzoner.

I forgot to mention this post is brought to you by the Old Town Bay St Louis Business Council: Continue reading ““They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance””

Other Voices: Maxine Ramsey | Don’t dam the Pascagoula River Tributaries

The Jackson County Board of Supervisors has allowed the Singing River Hospital System retirees’ pension to be in peril.

By spending thousands of taxpayers’ dollars on legal fees with no apparent solution, it appears the board continues to support the inept former and present hospital administration. Now, the board is attempting to shove the idea of damming the Pascagoula River down the throats of taxpayers.

The board has spent thousands of dollars in legal fees and in lobbying efforts to dam the Pascagoula to enrich a select few. Even though Jeff Bellweber claims the dams will protect the river’s flow and water level, the Pascagoula River has incurred droughts and floods for thousands of years and, like the Mississippi, keeps on meandering along. Why try to fool Mother Nature?

Industry has not asked for any additional water. Therefore, why attempt to fix something that is not broken? Continue reading “Other Voices: Maxine Ramsey | Don’t dam the Pascagoula River Tributaries”

Transparency again an issue at Bay City Hall

To say we have a few things going on in the background is a bit of an understatement as we have some major technology upgrades in progress to go with everything else thus we have several irons in the proverbial fire. I mention this because I left last week’s City Council meeting with the impression the Administration and Council would be working on a more cooperative level but that appears to be an illusion.

To set things up at 4:30 last Tuesday there was a Council workshop to discuss the audit and the capital improvements proposed to be funded by the upcoming bond issue. During the audit portion of the workshop City Clerk Clark disclosed to the City Council that the DoJ folks were done looking at the Equitable Sharing Funds, of which close to $300,000 looks to have been misspent by the Fillingame Administration on things like fancy street lights for Ward 2. Clark revealed that DoJ was requiring a forensic audit of the program before any further Equitable Sharing funds can be expended by the City and that everything he was telling the council was contained in an email that he received from the City’s contact at Department of Justice. The Council asked to see the correspondence and Clark indicated that would not be a problem.

The problem of course is that here we are a week later and sources on the Bay City Council indicate to Slabbed New Media that despite repeated requests to Mr. Clark for the requested information, he has not sent the DoJ email to the City Council, likely because Mayor Fillingame told him not to share the email being my guess. Continue reading “Transparency again an issue at Bay City Hall”

The biggest winner on Saturday was….

Brothel Billy and Slabbed New Media, LLC of course.

It does not happen often, but our participation with Mr. Billy in his “election” campaign caused us to burn off a follower on twitter. For my part if you’re on twitter I highly recommend the Nunny parody account because the talent behind it is undeniably top notch.