Harvey Smith... you big time spender you..

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/city-taxpayers-spring-for-lunch-chew-on-this-top-spots-money-makers-and-spenders-43759792.html

The 117 pages of records released in response to the Free Press request indicate that none of the nine councillors who hold city credit cards spent city money on political events in 2008. But they all spent money on restaurants, ranging from Daniel McIntyre Coun. Harvey Smith's $23.07 tab last year to Transcona Coun. Wyatt's tally of $5,466.98

Sorry, but I think that this spending on restaurants is complete bullshit!!!

They need to do business lunches like the Red River needs more water.

Deank wrote:http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/city-taxpayers-spring-for-lunch-chew-on-this-top-spots-money-makers-and-spenders-43759792.html

The 117 pages of records released in response to the Free Press request indicate that none of the nine councillors who hold city credit cards spent city money on political events in 2008. But they all spent money on restaurants, ranging from Daniel McIntyre Coun. Harvey Smith's $23.07 tab last year to Transcona Coun. Wyatt's tally of $5,466.98

You can tell that Russ likes his vittles.....no decent restaurants in trashcona.....

JTF wrote:Sorry, but I think that this spending on restaurants is complete bullshit!!!

They need to do business lunches like the Red River needs more water.

your forgetting, this is just the Credit Card statements. They have 70K that they spend on various activities as well.

I know that.

I am not certain that these business lunches should NOT be covered. But in the absence of details about the meetings I would say that some use it just a little too often.

C'mon Dean...these guys don't have to do "business lunches"...it's just an excuse to feed at the trough, nothing more.

some of them need to go on diets

JTF wrote:C'mon Dean...these guys don't have to do "business lunches"...it's just an excuse to feed at the trough, nothing more.

As a hard working person, the only time I would have available to meet them would be at lunch time. BUT I would think anything I was meeting with them about, if food was purchased that would go under the 70K allowance. As for business lunches, I can see some need for some. I think the problem here is that the word "business". Councillors do in fact need to meet to discuss city business with people from time to time. But its not neccessarily business as most people would see it. 5K seems to be a little excessive to me, but again without the details of what the meetings were for, its hard to really make a firm decision.

As a hard working person, the only time I would have available to meet them would be at lunch time.

Well, what you have to meet about couldn't be very important then eh.

As long as it is not abused business lunches can be a very effective business tool. The thought process here might be why does a councilor need to do business over lunch? Sometimes, as Deank alludes to, it is simply a productivity tool.

Business lunches for a business are perfectly reassonable imo. However, a city councillor is not a businessperson and their activities are completely different.

Like I said, it's just an excuse to feed at the public trough.

"However, a city councillor is not a businessperson and their activities are completely different."

how so????

The city is not a business.

Beg to differ.

It can be run professionally and in a business-like manner, but a city will never be a "business". Totally different concepts...completely different.

I beg to differ, if the city were run like an actual business with real constraints on spending and real accountablility to its shareholders I think we would be much better off.

Agreed Deank. Perhaps the biggest problem today is because they are not run like a business.

I see nothing wrong with politicians picking up the tab for "business" lunches. When I met iwth my councillor over some communty type issues, he picked up the tab. Accountability is the issue.

How the hell can Harvey Smith do any "business" with actual businesses and individuals within his ward? Obviously, he don't.

is harvey smithy actually alive?

but back to the spending, without knowing what these meetings were about, we can only guess and for some members to spend on average $67 per meeting, I would say that meetings should be held somewhere else. For instance my family and I ( 6 of us) ate at Boston pizza for $49 including tip this weekend. This is winnipeg and we are cheap at heart.. how come some councillors are not?

peeps are only cheap when they have to use their own money

Miz point wrote:peeps are only cheap when they have to use their own money

Just like the joke about why Scots never have coffee or tea the way they like it.

grumpy old man wrote:Agreed Deank. Perhaps the biggest problem today is because they are not run like a business.

Ahhh...businesses are there to make a profit...cities are there to allow people to make a business in order to make a profit....huge difference.

One of the problems we have is that some want to have the city get into things it has no business being involved in (pun unintended).

I don't know of any companies that make employees pay for business lunches. It's expected that they would have lots of working lunches and that they would go to places close to city hall. If you want them to drive to somewhere out of the area to get a 'cheaper' lunch we'll just be spending more on the travel time than what's saved on food.
Wow, big news, councilors go for lunch near work. Better than them driving across town and wasting half a day's worth of wages than spending an extra $20 on food. About $1850 at Kum-Koon (great food BTW) in 43 trips works out to about $43 dollars per trip. Assuming they would often be picking up the tab of the person they are eating with that's pretty damn good. And with wages and benefits probably costs us less than half an hour of their time. Get them to spend and extra 20 minutes driving to save $20 and with the return trip we're probably about $40 more in the hole. I don't know what the overhead and benefits work out to so it's more realistically probably around $80 that we'd be down. When I saw the headline I thought it would be something like $20K per councillor on meal expense claims. This is nothing.