Voice For Liberty

Travel should be the first Wichita expense to be cut

Bob Weeks

in

At tomorrow’s meeting of the Wichita City Council, council members have this item on their agenda:

“Approval of travel expenses for Council Member Janet Miller and Kelly Harper, Wichita Area Sister Cities President, to attend the International Cities Conference in Paris, France and the Sister Cities Loire Festival in Orleans, France, September 21-27.”

The city council office didn’t have a specific amount that the council is being asked to approve, and it’s possible that the city might not pay for Harper’s expenses.

Still, travel to France for nearly a week, even for one person, is expensive.

Whatever the amount is, it is a small amount when considered next to the magnitude of the city’s entire budget.

But when people are losing their jobs and the city is cutting its budget, expenses like this are highly symbolic.

Comments

5 responses to “Travel should be the first Wichita expense to be cut”

  1. Nelson

    The Mayor and City council travel budget has more than doubled under Mayor Brewer’s administration. They use the travel budget (taxpayer money) to “say thank you” to campaign contributors and supporters. Janet Miller can use “campaign money” to fund her trip instead of the taxpayer dollars. I don’t recall past Sister Cities presidents having their expenses paid to this event.

  2. Jim

    Where is the media on this? If these folks were conservatives it would already been investigated.

  3. Pat

    Council approved with no discussion.

  4. Grant

    You mean the Wichita city council approved blowing money on something without any consideration for this “cost cutting” that it apparently so desparately needs? Shocking! Maybe if they’d quit pouring tons of money into Cornejo every time they need to justify their budget, trying to satisfy everyone crying about minority contractors being under-employed in Wichita by creating projects that don’t need to be undertaken, and destroying a perfectly good stretch of city street or 10 every month for no reason, and approving expense expendiatures for trips to France, they wouldn’t have to farm out the city’s landscape care and add to the already long line of unemployed people waiting for a job or the state to cough up some unemployment.

  5. Cybex

    Don’t forget Key Construction. They are getting most of the City’s contract.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

More posts