SAFFORD — “Three people going to dinner and it’s an almost $400 meal? That’s a little excessive. I don’t know that the taxpayers would be OK with that,” said Safford City Council member Dusti Brantner, during a review of February and March spending via Purchase Card at the July 14 City Council meeting.
Brantner and Vice Mayor Arnold Lopez questioned the city’s meal policy during employee travel.
The city’s policy is to cover all meal expenses without a cap, according to Finance Director Troy Bingham, encouraging employees to conform to U.S. General Services Administration rates of around $38 per person for dinner, or about $101 for all three meals per day while traveling.
Bingham said a shift to paying a flat rate per diem for hotels and meals could be “an administrative burden of tracking all that, and making sure people get paid”; however, said he would bring forward policy alternatives for review by the council at a September work session.
A total of $1,036.82 was spent on 16 meals from Feb. 21 to March 20, according to the city’s report, an average expense of $64.80.
While no individual meal cost $400, more than half the amount spent on meals was paid for by the Finance Department, including the largest single amount of $199.08 for a lunch at a Buffalo Wild Wings for Cochise County’s SEACOM delegation, and four meals totaling $318.11 during a conference in Flagstaff.
With the Finance Department expenses removed from the equation, all other city departments are spending an average of $47.24 per meal.
“You need to be mindful of whose money you’re spending,” Brantner said. “It’s not coming out of your pocket; it’s coming out of your neighbor’s.”
