Council Expenses

[council3_rubal]

Fellow Council Members,

This FY, Council expenses were budgeted for $35,000. Currently, 16,961.59 (48% of budget) has been expended. However, there has not been a discussion of Council expenditures to date, nor was this part of the quarterly report. This may be an oversight since it is a new account fund. Certainly, it would be reasonable for the Council to be aware of the expenditures that are charged to their fund account. This fund must be transparent to residents.

• Please review the attached.
• I recommend to the Council that account expenditures be reviewed and posted quarterly.
• I recommend that expenditures on this account have a formal and transparent approval process.
• As of 3/15/25, Membership/subscriptions and Promotions Development accounted for $13,555 in expenditures. It would be reasonable for staff or the Mayor to define these expenses at their earliest convenience.

Thank you for your consideration in reviewing the attached and for your recommendations regarding the reporting and approval of Council expenses. I do not believe that self-approval of expenses is part of standard practice at any level of government service.

 

[council4_vaughan]

I think we need the details of what is in these accounts to have a better feel for what they are. Most of these are probably logical like the fee for this message board or the TML webinars that we are all invited to.

As long as all council members are invited to participate in whatever expenditures are incurred and as long as what is incurred is within budget, I don't really see a problem with it.

I think the department should include council training, the allowance for whoever wants to take it, and any discretionary items we as a council want to spend.

I would ask staff if they have a clear understanding of what gets coded to the department and if they are comfortable telling a councilmember no on a particular request that may not be transparent to the rest of council.

 

[council3_rubal]

Those are good comments, as usual, especially for clarifying the coding to this fund, and I hope you support the reporting of the fund expenses with other quarterly fund finances with posting for transparency.

The only exception to your comments regards "...and any discretionary items we as a council want to spend." This is a bit vague. I would like to ensure that there is a review process before expenditures to avoid "self-approval of expenses" and in some cases, expenditures made without Council members' knowledge on their behalf.

Although slightly off-topic but it is related. If the Council is open, it is not unreasonable for goals and objectives for travel to be established before travel for other than required training. At a future time, I would like to introduce the value of a "white paper" to be written by our traveling member(s) and delivered with the consensus of the Council as a powerful tool to complement trips to legislative venues. However, one step at a time. Let's figure out where the money is being spent first.