Skelly places free city hall lunches on council’s plate
Free lunches are back on the political menu at city hall.
The hot button issue has been back-burnered since 2011 when The Spectator revealed the city spends about $33,000 a year on free sandwiches, pizza, cookies, and coffee and tea for councillors and senior staffers who meet over the lunch hour.
But this week Coun. Donna Skelly applied fresh grease to the question of whether the freebies are appropriate by asking if there’s a financial argument in favour of the practice.
Finance general manger Mike Zegarac responded that the free grub is provided to avoid interrupting committee meetings by breaking for lunch.
Skelly’s interest was triggered by a letter in The Spec which suggested that, given the city’s “budget crisis,” the lunch money should be directed to the Poverty Roundtable’s request for a $30,000 funding increase.
“I certainly wouldn’t want us to be accused to taking advantages of this when we’re talking about budget challenges,” Skelly said.
Coun. Brenda Johnson chimed in that councillors were previously told that free working lunches made sense because breaking for lunch leads to staff overtime costs.
“I’m all for let’s look at this again,” Johnson said, adding a review needs to include the impact on the tax levy if the freebies are stopped.
For his part, Mayor Fred Eisenberger says he’s willing to consider “reasonable alternatives” such as councillors offering to contribute money to offset the cost of the feed bags.
But Eisenberger says in the big picture it’s “really kind of nickel and diming.” People need sustenance to get through long, uninterrupted meetings, he says.
“I think it’s an accommodation for efficiency and I think it’s an expense that’s totally justifiable.”
The issue whipped up a storm of public outrage in 2011, particularly since municipalities such as Toronto, Windsor and Guelph had recently cut the perks in the name of budget savings.
Most people probably recognize that $33,000 is a trivial sum in light of the city’s overall annual $2.1 billion budget.
But it’s hard not to see it as spoiled public sector gravy, made all the more aggravating given the high salaries of senior staffers and those of councillors, who now earn $93,000, annually.
In the face of previous criticisms, Sam Merulla and Jason Farr undertook to speak to staff and their fellow councillors about voluntarily dropping the freebies. But nothing much happened.
“The bottom line is the response I received formally from staff is the elimination of it would make us somewhat inefficient and end up costing us more in the long run,” said Merulla.
Merulla says he raised the prospect of councillors all chipping in to pay for the lunches but was told it would be logistically difficult because not everybody might agree.
Merulla sees this as a matter of optics. “I think in the grand scheme of things we should be focused on issues that actually decrease taxes rather than ones that have no impact except, maybe, optically.”
That’s fair enough. And certainly the argument about not wanting to interrupt the continuity of meetings makes perfect sense. But to my mind, there’s still no reason why politicians and staff can’t pick up the tab themselves. They would if they were going out to eat, why should a working lunch be any different?
That said, I admit I’m extremely hardboiled on this kind of stuff. Nothing makes me cringe more than seeing media colleagues, both mainstream and independent journalists, helping themselves to food or swag at community events. Whether sitting down to a free bacon and egg breakfast or waltzing off with a plate of leftover pastries, the optics stink and that odour clings to and taints the profession.
The same applies to elected officials and senior staffers. If they can’t get their act together to create a policy or organize themselves to pay for their own city hall chow, at the very least they should put out a donation jar in the lunch room and give the proceeds to a good cause. The ball is clearly in their food court.
It’s hard not to see it as spoiled public sector gravy ... given the high salaries of senior staffers ...