Big spenders can explain

Expenses high for thrift advocates on city council

Two councillors who publicly pride themselves on thrift had by far the biggest expense accounts on council last year — but they have explanations.

Bay Councillor Mark Taylor led the pack with reimbursed expenses of more than $24,000, according to a report on councillors’ pay and benefits summing up what they cost in 2012. Kanata South’s Allan Hubley was second at $18,000. No other councillors claimed more than $7,500, and most were lower than that.

Councillors Peter Clark and Diane Holmes claimed none. The median claim was $1,892.

Taylor ran for office on promises to oppose raises for councillors and refuse the roughly $7,000 travel allowances to which they’re entitled. He said Wednesday that his expenses were so high because he paid for data gathering in support of the city’s plans to support redevelopment on a stretch of Carling Avenue in his ward.

“We wanted to make sure that we had good data to support the business that need to be located there,” he said. “There’s holes in the data that the city has, so we just went out and got it ourselves.”

Bay ward is to benefit from a “community improvement plan” that will subsidize businesses bringing particular kinds of jobs to Carling Avenue west of Pinecrest Road. Taylor said that either way, the city government would pay for the studies needed to apply the program; he’s just arranged it so the money comes out of his office budget rather than an economic-development fund.