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

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.

I agree; much ado about nothing

"This is nothing."

pretty much agree with that... just would be nice to have slightly more detail as to WHAT a meeting means and who was there.

ie.. is it say always the Councillors assistant that they are "meeting" with..

Yes, please post pics of their "assistants"!

Deank wrote:"This is nothing."

pretty much agree with that... just would be nice to have slightly more detail as to WHAT a meeting means and who was there.

ie.. is it say always the Councillors assistant that they are "meeting" with..

Yeah, that's a reasonable request.

I'm willing to bet the expense report submitted has more detail than the reports released to the public. I would expect some meetings would be confidential and should not be revealed publicly. As long as proper oversight is in place I'm okay with it.

As long as these guy's are NOT going all Donald Benham with their expenses I'm okay with it.

going all Donald Benham

To what event does this reference?

He used his city credit card for personal expenses. And even after being caught, made to pay the city back, he repeated to use it for personal expenses. He even had the temerity to be all indignant when challenged. Large nads on this waste of skin...

okay, you meant as long as they AREN'T going all Donald Benham...

Ahhh. Yes. Corrected it.

do the councillors include the tip in the amount that they charge I wonder? Or do they pay the tip themselves?

Yeah that is a good question.....tipping.....who should ultimately pay for that? If it is us then I hope the tips are generous...the least they could do.

I know whenever I expense for business I pay the Tip myself, even though company policy has in place a Tip percentage we are allowed.

Well I hope you are not a cheap bastard.....do they allow tipping at Rotten Ronnie's?

That's generous stupid of you Deank...

Miz point wrote:Well I hope you are not a cheap bastard.....do they allow tipping at Rotten Ronnie's?

Actually...they do.

The McD's at WalMart on McPhillips...someone working there had actually put a cup that said "TIPS" on it on the counter.
Had a couple of bucks in it too.

But does Deank's company allow tipping at McD's?

Miz point wrote:Well I hope you are not a cheap bastard.....do they allow tipping at Rotten Ronnie's?

heh... When its the company paying i move up in the world.. all the up to A&W.

more expenses.. again seem reasonable
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/katz-renews-call-for-transparency-43866902.html

I agree with GreatFlatLand AND Bartley Kives. The expenses should be available for all to see (like Toronto does). And, so far, this is a non-event. Not really newsworthy...

yeah seeing the expenses like TO does would be nice.. I would like to see this for all levels of Civic government.

I promise when elected MY expenses will be available for all to see regardless of what the current legislation is.

Ummm, Deank? You announcing something here? I'll work your campaign!

Actually, I'd rather see policies and protocols in place to handle this type of issue. This is a metropolitan city of 650,000+ people and a massive budget, so scouring through Harvey Smith's bills for t shirts is not top of the agenda. If they have an allowance, it should be defined what it can be used for. I could be equally indignant about Gerbasi spending money on books for school kids when we put so much money into libraries in schools and the public system.

The policies and procedures are in place. This is why a past councillors misdeeds were caught.

grumpy old man wrote:Ummm, Deank? You announcing something here? I'll work your campaign!

You avoiding the question Deank????? Inquiring minds want to know.