Vaughan resident fired up over 'extravagant' city staff trips

Rob Kenedy: Stop treating taxpayers' dollars like a 'faucet' and a 'bank'

Yorkregion.com
July 20, 2018
Tim Kelly

A Vaughan resident is angry city staffers are going on what he says are “extravagant trips” and spending public money on City of Vaughan purchasing cards for hotel rooms.

He believes they are treat taxpayers’ dollars like a “faucet” and a “bank.”

Rob Kenedy, president of the Mackenzie Ridge Ratepayers Association and a professor of sociology at York University, said he has looked at a list of where Vaughan staffers stayed using purchasing cards between April 2015 and April 2017. Those are essentially City of Vaughan credit cards issued to select staff with spending limits imposed on them to replace expense forms.

Kenedy said trips to Las Vegas, China, Dallas and Florida seem more like vacation destinations than places where you would go for work.

“It’s also the rooms they were staying at,” Kenedy pointed out, looking at room stays that range from $1,179.26 for the period Aug. 31, 2016, through Sept. 2, 2016, at the Millennium in Minneapolis to $1,806.67 for the period July 21 to July 22, 2016, at the Hilton in New York City. It’s not clear from the P-card report how many employees stayed and how many rooms were reserved in Minneapolis and New York City on each P-card. However, a quick check of the Hilton and the Millennium on Hotels.com showed even with deep discounts, both hotels are well over $300 per night Canadian per room for two adults in mid-July. The prices are far higher without the discount.

Asked to clarify exactly how many people stayed in the hotel rooms in question during those periods, City of Vaughan staff replied: “The exact number of employees staying in a hotel on each trip, including business purpose, is detailed when submitting supporting documentation on an individual employee basis and the information is not collectively recorded. However, the transaction data provided relates to facility reservations and not for overnight hotel stays.”

The city also said the rates are for standard hotel rooms.

Kennedy believes staffers should be staying in far more modest accommodation while on trips on the taxpayers’ dime.

“This is taxpayers’ money, it’s not a faucet that can be turned on and off,” he said.

His answer is that instead of P-cards, staffers should get a modest per diem, as he does from York University when he travels for research purposes.

“You should be able to stay, as an employee, at a decent hotel, a 3-star, paying around $100 to $150 which is reasonable considering the locales -- but food should be priced per diem.

If it’s a day in most locales, it should be $75 or $65 a day and that’s it,” Kenedy said.

He feels staffers should submit receipts for everything they spend and if they wish to spend more than their per diem, it should come out of their own pockets.

He would like to see audits on a regular basis of the P-card system, which he believes is “quite a disaster.”

He wants the city to go back to receipts being submitted and expenses being paid on a monthly basis.

“I have to submit all my bills, they’re scrutinized, the bottom line is, what I have to deal with at a public institution (university), they should have to deal with at a public institution (city).”

THE ISSUE: The use of City of Vaughan staff purchasing cards for expenses on business trips

LOCAL IMPACT: How City of Vaughan staff spending impacts your taxpayer dollars