HUNTINGTON BEACH : Council to Resume City-Supplied Meals

Less than four months after voting to discontinue their city-supplied dinners before meetings, City Council members this week decided to resume them.

Council members in January voted to buy their own dinners before each of the meetings, held every two weeks, as a token measure to demonstrate that the city is trying to cut expenses during the recession.

But, at the request of Councilman Jack Kelly, the council unanimously agreed to rescind that action.

Kelly said he believes that members’ buying their own meals was too inconvenient. Council and staff members break for an hour during their pre-meeting discussions to go to restaurants. When the city had the dinner sent in, usually sandwiches, the staff continued working while they ate.

Before the change, the city paid between $5.50 and $7.50 per meal for the seven council members and 13 department heads. That costs the city between $1,050 and $1,400 per year.

“The pre-meeting dining experience never was a sought-after social soiree,” Kelly wrote in a letter to his colleagues.

“It was always, in fact, a tiresome exercise of gulping uninspired menu items on the run” while council members were discussing complex issues, he said.

As a consequence, he said, officials typically rushed through pre-meeting discussions to accommodate dinner. By resuming the city-paid meals, officials can spend more time attending to business, Kelly said.

“There seems no reasonable justifications to accept over-the-edge work habits as divine mandate to fulfill (the) council’s fiduciary responsibility,” he wrote.

When Kelly brought the issue up at this week’s council meeting, none of his colleagues objected to reverting back to city-supplied dinners.

“This does save time for the staff,” Councilman Peter M. Green said.