Homelessness, affordable housing, domestic violence are topics of public concern and personal interest to members of the Auburn City Council.
But with conferences, forums and the like on these issues and many often taking place far away from Auburn, the delicate question arises: who gets to travel this time?
Not only does travel cost money, of course, but the City Council does not get to say “who goes.” Today, the final say rests with City administration, specifically, with the mayor, who makes the final authorization on out-of-state travel.
On Monday council members revived a conversation they began last November: should they manage their own travel budget; and should they decide for themselves who goes?
Deputy Mayor Largo Wales revealed what she and Shelley Coleman, financial director for the City of Auburn, had come up with since that earlier meeting as a yearly financial figure for each councilmember.
“We looked at the total amount, and we came up with a little fudge factor of $6,000 in there per person, plus a little extra in case something happened. And I’d like to start implementing this sooner rather than later,” Wales said, noting that the March conference of the National League of Cities in Washington, D.C., is fast approaching, and all of Auburn’s council members attend it. The NLC is an advocacy organization that represents 19,000 cities, towns and villages throughout the nation, including Auburn.
“She (Coleman) didn’t feel there was any reason we couldn’t book it ourselves (rather than the mayor’s staff). I feel with each of us having a certain amount, we are going to be due-diligent about making sure we get the costs down. Not that they were exorbitant, but we are going to be doing a lot more shopping to maximize some of the training opportunities that we want to do,” Wales said.
The City Council has its own section in the City budget under administration, and the funds are not commingled with administrative dollars, Coleman has said.
Nothing in the City Code mandates that the mayor has to manage the travel budget, Wales said, so one possibility is for the deputy mayor to henceforth receive monthly accounts of each council member.
The council set up a three-person ad-hoc committee, with Bill Peloza as chair, to work on the matter, and agreed to discuss the issue in depth at its Feb. 13 study session.
Councilman Rich Wagner, who in November declared himself all for professional learning and events for council and City staff, said on occasion that he regretted the present lack of “clear criteria” to say when travel dollars should be spent, and on what.
Claude Dacorsi recommended at the meeting that a council budget be set aside for council activities overall, not just for travel, and that the deputy mayor should manage the budget and be the official responsible for expenditures.
