Homelessness, affordable housing, Sister Cities, domestic violence …

Hot topics all, both of public concern and personal interest to members of the Auburn City Council. But with conferences, forums and the like on these issues and many more often taking place far away from Auburn, the delicate question arises: which council members get to travel this time.

Not only does travel cost money, of course, but the City Council does not get to say “who goes.” The final say rests with City administration, specifically, with the mayor, who makes the final authorization on out-of-state travel.

To put this all clearly, the council is chafing a bit at the chain.

On Monday council members talked about arranging to have their own travel budget and deciding for themselves who travels.

After talking things over with her fellow council members, Deputy Mayor Largo Wales tasked attorney Dan Heid with drawing up an ordinance.

“We seem to struggle as to who gets to go where, to professional growth activities we feel meet our areas of interest and skills that we want to share regionally so we can get our job done,” Wales said. “We are the legislative group trying to figure out what we need, but it becomes cumbersome when we have to go other ways.”

Councilman Rich Wagner, who declared himself all for professional learning and events for council and City staff, added that he regrets the present lack of “clear criteria” to say when travel dollars should be spent, and on what.

“I’ll come out and say it – I think we overspend on Sister Cities, and I think we underspend on NCL,” Wagner said, a reference to The National League of Cities, an advocacy organization that represents 19,000 cities, towns and villages throughout the nation, including Auburn.

“That’s the current situation in the last few weeks,” Wagner said. “But in general, I am in favor of more travel money than we have been spending, applied to criteria that make sense.”

Councilman John Holman suggested setting up a clear policy for travel, for instance allowing no more than three council people to be out of state at any one time so that there would always be a quorum left behind should emergencies arise.

“We could set the policy for travel … and it would be our budget and our responsibility to remain in budget,” Holman said. “If we are getting close to spending our budget, we would have to slow down. We would make the decisions as a council as to who goes to what, and we are then in charge of our own budget, our own membership, and who travels to where, as opposed to having it being directed to us. We would just take that, and the responsibilities that come with it.”

Claude Dacorsi recommended that a council budget be set aside for council activities overall, not just for travel. He said the deputy mayor should manage the budget and be the official responsible for expenditures.

City Finance Director Shelley Coleman noted that the City Council has its own section in the City budget under administration, but the funds are not commingled with administrative dollars.

The Auburn Reporter sought travel budget expenditures for the year 2016, but they were not available at the time this issue went to press.