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March 3, 2010

Our View: Buy your own dinner

City should save the $9,000-plus in meals

Stillwater NewsPress

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Revenue down. Utility rates up. Budget needing cuts. Sewer lines in disrepair. Water pipeline needing replaced.
Our mayor and City Council members have spent considerable time lately talking about these and related money-woe topics. Apparently they were talking with their mouths full - of taxpayer-provided pizza.
The city manager has asked city employees and Stillwater residents for suggestions on how to cut spending to meet a budget shortfall.
Here’s one: Buy your own darned dinner. 
The city taxpayers have been springing for dinner for the City Council, staff and members of other boards to the tune of nearly $10,000 per year. Mayor Nathan Bates asked them to add it up recently but no one has mentioned him pushing away from the table. He notes that he accepts the free meals right along with the rest, referring to them as traditional.
That’s a tradition our new mayor ought to be trying to break, as should the rest of the council.
And who started this tradition? When was it ever fair and justifiable for City Council members to show up early so the city - and by that I mean the public - could buy them a meal? If the City Council meets too early to run home and eat like your constituents, move the meetings to a later time. Or, better yet, brown bag it. 
Dropping that expense should be a no brainer in any economy. But to continue to bring in the pizzas on the city’s dollar in these economic times? The idea should give us all indigestion.


 

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