Starkville’s mayor and seven-person board of aldermen have racked up a combined $60,121 travel bill this term, and the bills of three individual officials — Mayor Parker Wiseman, Ward 2 Alderman Lisa Wynn and Ward 7 Alderman Henry Vaughn — each surpassed the $10,000 mark.
Documents obtained by The Dispatch show the three officials leading in travel expenses have combined for $41,285.68 in costs dating back to 2013’s Mississippi Municipal League’s Small Town Conference in Tunica.
Wynn, the official with the highest accrued travel expenses, has entries for 11 events totaling $15,827.48, records show. It also shows Wiseman, who has attended 14 conferences and other smaller events and board meetings, accrued $15,210.01 in associated costs. Vaughn’s $10,248.19 travel expenditure line item came from only six trips, including excursions to Washington D.C. and Seattle, Washington along with Wiseman and Wynn.
The five other aldermen — Ward 1’s Ben Carver, Ward 3’s David Little, Ward 4’s Jason Walker, Ward 5’s Scott Maynard and Vice Mayor Roy A. Perkins — have combined for $18,836 in travel since the start of the term, averaging about $3,767 per representative.
Carver, the most traveled of those five, has expenditure entries for seven trips that combined for $6,628.35. Perkins only attended one trip this term — a Mississippi Municipal League ceremony in which he was inducted into its hall of fame — at a listed cost of $800. That total is in question since staff confirmed a different amount: $679.
Walker, the aldermen who took the second-fewest amount of trips, also traveled to the Pacific Northwest in 2013. His four trips cost a combined $5,172.17, and the Washington trip accounted for almost half of the total.
Little and Maynard have each taken five trips this term at a combined $3,429.46 and $2,804.94, respectively. Last week, Wynn nominated the pair and Wiseman to attend November’s National League of Cities conference in Nashville, Tennessee.
A summary of expenses provided in the June 2 e-packet states the trip — registration, lodging, parking, mileage and “around town” costs — should cost about $2,349.09 per attendee.
Documents show the city has expended $7,533.33 on board travel this fiscal year, and $12,466.67 of the $20,000 line item remains. The mayor’s travel budget, an $11,000 funding stream this fiscal year, has approximately $7,118.28 remaining after $3,881.72 in Fiscal Year 2014-2015 expenditures.
In previous fiscal years, the mayor’s travel budget also included similar expenses for the chief administrative officer and his administrative assistant.
CAO Taylor Adams has expended $2,861.94 of his $11,000 travel budget this fiscal year, while the administrative assistant’s line item has $2,066 remaining of its $3,000 FY 2014-2015 allotment.
Elected officials and city staff use conferences to collect education credits that count toward a variety of municipal and professional certifications.
Aldermen earn $15,000 annually in their part-time capacities, while the full-time mayor’s salary is set at $71,500.
Carl Smith covers Starkville and Oktibbeha County for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter @StarkDispatch
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