Last night's city council meeting was almost non-eventful until near the end.
Mr Straub again brought up his concept regarding council travel and how many meetings a year they could go to and what approval was needed.
That was when I said to myself, "enough is enough". Prior to the meeting I had received a copy of the itemized $392 dinner that he and Pflumm were the hosts for (it was on Pflumm's tab).
Refer back to my blog entry of 6/25/08. I had asked Mr Pflumm if there was alcohol included on that tab. He said no, and that I had to rely on his word. Horse nonsense. Open records requests are beautiful.
Now with the full receipt available I informed him (and Straub) that there was $78 worth of alcohol on that receipt ($10 beer and $68 wine). Mr Pflumm then apologized for his original misleading response, saying he was not prepared at that meeting to answer it (huh????). Simple question Mr Engineer. He said that there was alcohol served prior to dinner, but on a separate tab. Guess what? You charged the city for booze for dinner, eventhough you claim you didn't drink any of it. More than one somebody at the table did, and you didn't notice?
Now the kicker. Pflumm indicated on his expense report that there were four people at that dinner. He claimed himself, Straub and one aide each from Sen Brownback's & Sen Roberts' offices. I asked him to explain how come the receipt showed 5 persons and there were 5 entrées served. Whooops, now he and Straub suddenly remembered that there was another senate staffer at that dinner. Who? Hmmm, don't remember, gotta go home and look at the business cards. Amazing eh? Couldn't remember to add that 5th person "another senate staffer" to the list on the expense report? Didn't even think to volunteer the info when the matter of the dinner came up at the 6/23 meeting.
Yes, I am still curious who the 5th person was. Was it really a senate staffer or was it an individual not authorized to have their dinner paid for by the city? Will be looking forward to seeing if a name is provided. For the record: Open records requests apply to federal offices as well as local. I believe there are logs in Senate & Congressional offices that would indicate when staffers were taken to events (dinner, ball games etc) by individuals having an interest in something that the Congressman and/or Senator can provide.
Oh yes, Straub thought I was carrying on a vendetta against him and Pflumm on this blog.
No Kevin, not a vendetta. Just tired of BS, and sanctimonious holier than thou attitudes. I'm still ticked off by Pflumm's "because I said so" comment on 6/23, apology notwithstanding. And Kevin, you want to control council trips but boy, you and Pflumm sure took advantage on the last one. And anyway, there are many other topics on here that don't include the two of you.
After all of the above (and there was quite a lengthy discussion by the council on Straub's suggested "controls") Dawn Kuhn came up with a motion.
Dawn proposed that the council decline their scheduled pay increase. The motion carried.
