Image Credit: UNSPLASH/Michelle Spollen

Every year, municipalities and regional districts publish reports on how much mayors, councillors and directors are paid and how much they rack up in expenses.

Called Statement of Financial Information (SOFI) reports, they show remuneration and expenses for elected officials and employees who earn more than $75,000 a year.

What they don’t show is the thousands — or in bigger cities like Kelowna, tens of thousands — more dollars spent each year by elected officials and staff that are accounted for elsewhere.

In the Thompson-Nicola Regional District, that hidden spending led to a forensic audit after it was revealed earlier this year in reporting by Kamloops This Week that former CAO Sukh Gill had spent tens of thousands of dollars on expensive meals, gifts and alcohol, often for board members.

READ MORE: Forensic audit report into TNRD finances delayed

iNFOnews.ca has taken a look at how spending is done in other jurisdictions and took a look at expenses incurred for Kelowna’s mayor and city councillors.

We've taken a deeper look at the expenses claimed and posted in the Statement of Financial Information since it just lists the total amount claimed by each council member for the previous year.

WHAT’S INCLUDED IN THE SOFI REPORTS

In 2020, Mayor Colin Basran and the eight city councillors claimed a mere $12,797 in expenses, with Basran responsible for $9,608 of that.

But 2020 was a COVID year so there weren’t any in-person conventions like those put on by the Union of B.C. Municipalities and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities with their subsequent flights, hotels, meals and other expenses.

So we looked at the previous five years, from 2015 to 2019, instead.

The average expenses paid to all eight Kelowna councillors and the mayor combined was just under $39,000, of which Basran accounted for about $14,750, on average.

READ MORE: Former CAO was, by far, TNRD's highest paid staff member last year

The mayor’s expenses are boosted by the fact that he drives a car provided by the City of Kelowna with an average of $6,337 per year allocated on his expense account.

As for the rest of the spending, the biggest cost item was accommodation at an average of $11,609 per year followed by registration fees of $10,110, air fare of $7,573 and per diems of $2,262.

The per diems are set at $70 per day for “meals, gratuities, dry cleaning, local telephone calls and other miscellaneous costs for trips involving more than one day away from Kelowna,” the council spending bylaw states.

That Statement of Financial Information is included in a city council agenda once a year, usually in June.

READ MORE: Kelowna city manager tops list of city hall salaries at $289K

HERE'S WHAT IS NOT INCLUDED IN THE SOFI REPORTS

When we dug deeper – thanks to the help of city staff led by Corporate Finance manager Shelly Little – it turns out that the amount spent on city councillors is actually more than twice as much as what’s stated in the financial reports.

It averaged just under $42,300 a year over that five-year period from 2015 to 2019.

There was an average of an additional $10,572 in vehicle costs for the mayor from 2015 to 2019. The biggest part of that is the lease, which started at $6,406 in 2015 and climbed to $7,229 in 2019. The other annual costs for the mayor's vehicle include fuel, insurance, repairs and maintenance.

The city gave Basran a credit card in 2018 but it can only be used for fuel, Little wrote in an email to iNFOnews.ca.

Overall, the mayor’s car costs city taxpayers an average of about $16,900 a year, of which only an average of $6,337 is stated in the publicly available Statement of Financial Information.

“The portion of the benefit that is considered personal is included in the total expenses in the Council Remuneration and Expense Report,” Little wrote. “The remainder of the expenses related to the provision of the vehicle are not included here.”

Another big ticket item is meals for the mayor and council that are provided when meetings run into the lunch or dinner periods. Those averaged almost $11,000 a year. No alcohol is allowed to be claimed as an expense.

There is a mayor and council expenses bylaw that allows Basran to entertain guests at city expense.

“The mayor and deputy mayor, when attending on behalf of the mayor, are hereby authorized to, and shall be entitled for reimbursement of, expenses incurred for the entertainment of guests of the city or to promote the interests of the city,” the policy states.

Despite the fact that there is an annual budget of $7,000 to $9,000 for this item, Basran has not overdone things on the entertainment side, averaging a mere $424.35 a year over the five-year period.

The other major council expense was office and operating supplies, averaging $13,233 per year.

While only the Statement of Financial Information is easily available to the public, the other spending is included in the Payments to Suppliers of Goods and Services section of city accounts, for those who know how to find them.

To contact a reporter for this story, email Rob Munro or call 250-808-0143 or email the editor. You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.

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