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For many years, elected officials in Tarpon Springs didn't travel outside the city much. They didn't care to learn how other cities handled the business of running a city. And they didn't care to mingle with other elected officials. Tarpon Springs was known for its parochial outlook.
A story that appeared in Sunday's Times is perhaps a sign of how much things have changed in that regard in Tarpon Springs.
Staff writer Candace Rondeaux reported on the cost of Tarpon Springs City Commission travel over the past two years. The story focused on ex-City Commissioner Beverley Billiris, who resigned in December to run for mayor, and how Billiris spent almost twice as much as all the other commissioners combined.
During 2001 and 2002, the city budgeted about $15,000 for city commissioners' travel. Credit card statements show that Billiris spent $11,939. The next highest total was Commissioner David Archie's $2,579, followed by Jim Archer's $1,758. Mayor Frank DiDonato spent only $818. Commissioner Karen Brayboy, elected in March 2001, spent $731.
There is a whopping difference between Billiris' spending and that of her colleagues, and that is reason enough for a close look at how and why she spends so much.
Billiris says she did a lot of traveling during the past two years because she likes to travel and was able to do it, while other commissioners couldn't get away as easily. She also says it was less expensive for her to go to meetings, workshops and mixers than for the city to hire a lobbyist to represent its interests. She claims that her travel helped win hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants for the city.
Billiris is a gregarious person who obviously enjoys people. But her domination of the City Commission's travel budget is not only questionable, it apparently came as a surprise to some of her commission colleagues. That shouldn't happen.
In many cities, elected officials each have a travel budget that they cannot exceed during the year, and the elected body also has a formal procedure to determine who gets to travel and when. In several North Pinellas cities, elected officials discuss upcoming conventions and social events in a public meeting and work out which elected official will attend to represent the city. There are rules about how much they may spend on meals and how far they must travel in order to stay overnight in a hotel.
Tarpon Springs is disturbingly lax in that regard. It appears that no one signs off on commissioners' travel - they just go where they want to, when they want to. Neither is there routine public discussion of commissioners' travel plans, much less any group consensus reached on whether the city needs to send a representative or who it should be. Commissioners don't have individual travel budgets and don't seem aware of how much others are spending.
There are valid reasons for elected officials to travel. The best one is education.
The Florida League of Cities, for example, conducts workshops to help elected officials keep up with developments in municipal government and in state law, or learn how to be better representatives in their communities. Elected officials struggling with a difficult issue - for example, how to revive a declining downtown or solve a crime problem in a neighborhood - often can get ideas from touring other cities that have met that challenge already.
But the value of such education to Tarpon Springs taxpayers is reduced if only one commissioner is getting most of the education. The money and the opportunities should be shared equally, and Tarpon Springs should have written procedures to guarantee that opportunity to every commissioner.
Some cities believe it also is beneficial to send elected officials to Tallahassee occasionally to hobnob with legislators, speak to legislative committees and try to win state funding for local projects. Other cities hire lobbyists to handle that task for them.
Billiris may or may not be a good lobbyist for Tarpon Springs. But presumably, she entered city politics with no less and no more experience in that field than her colleagues, so they also ought to have the opportunity - and indeed have some responsibility - to help bring home the bacon for Tarpon.