City Council night meetings: $697 each, utilities not included
A night meeting of the City Council would cost $697, utilities not included, the Independent Budget Analyst writes in a report just-released report. The IBA issued the report at the request of the City Council, which is considering a proposal to hold one meeting a night every month as part of a larger package of reforms proposed by councilmembers Carl DeMaio and Donna Frye. The theory is that regular working folks can’t take days off to come to the usual Monday and Tuesday meetings, but maybe they would attend night meetings. Assuming one meeting a month, as proposed, that adds up to $6,970 in extra costs a year. Utilities could not be calculated because, the report says, they couldn’t get the data in a useful form to do the math. The $697 covers security and dinner for councilmembers and staff. If councilmembers took care of their own dinners, the cost would be $230 a month.
The IBA also surveyed several other California cities and found that Oakland, Carlsbad, Solana Beach and San Jose already host night meetings on a regular basis.
Update: an earlier version of this post erroneously said it would cost $630 per meeting, or a total of $6,300 for 10 monthly meetings (no meetings in August or Decembers).
Once again City Beat screws up. Frye and Demaio are only proposing 10 evening meetings a year–skipping August and december.
City Beat botched the calculation by multiplying by 12.
Moreover, why include food for Council? Ever heard of brown bag lunch/dinner?
Geez guys. If you are in a glass house, stop throwing stones.
Thanks for clearing that up Justin. The post has been corrected. Not sure why we’re in a glass house, though. Care to elaborate?
DINNER? I mean really DINNER???? Do we supply lunch on Monday council meetings or breakfast on the Tuesday meetings? Why in the world would we be supplying the Council and staff dinner?
I think Council and staff would be fine supplying their own dinner. These people attend a ton of night meetings and events that do NOT have food and endure just fine. I’m sure they would be willing to forego dinner on the city’s dime. It would be really interesting to see if any Councilmember thinks otherwise