Artesia Council Sets New Guildelines For Official Travel

The Artesia City Council voted last Monday to approve a resolution that would amend the city’s policy for council members and other officials traveling on official city business.

This resolution was tied with another resolution approving the City’s budget for the 2011-2012 fiscal year in a single vote. Both resolutions were approved with a 4-1 vote.

Council Member Sally Flowers cast the lone dissenting vote, saying that the new policies, including a pooled travel budget for three important conferences that limits attendance to three council members, does not address a “fair” selection process and would be “unfair” for members wishing to go to conferences at city expense but without enough funding from the city.

“I just think if more than three want to go [to these conferences], there should be a lottery or else you limit each person one time a year,” she said. “I think it’s a good idea and [the travel budget] should be limited, but I think it should be done fairly.”

Mayor Victor Manalo said the new rules would be a cost-saving measure for the City Council budget.

“When we’re looking at the budget and what was happening was that the funds that were not being used were carried over year to year,” he said. “We have $50 something thousand that we’re not using.”

He said that any Council Member could attend the conferences, but would need to use their annual travel budgets to cover their costs.

Some of the new guidelines include giving each council member $2,500 annually for travel and meeting expenses, while the mayor gets $3,000 annually. The city budgets the allocations from December 1 through November 30 of the following year, with any unused amount on July 1 of each year carried over into the new fiscal year. No funds from earlier fiscal years are carried over.

The new rules would mean a reduction to the City Council’s budget by $17,870.

For the three important conferences attended by the City Council involving organizations such as the League of California Cities and the California Contract Cities Association, the amended city travel policy establishes a pooled travel account of $10,000, with only two members of the Council and the Mayor attending each conference.

Election Set For November

The Council also approved resolutions related to the upcoming city election. The election for two seats in the Council will happen on November 8 and will coincide with the election for ABC Unified School District board members.

Illegal Dumping

The Council voted to consider a future policy regulating illegal dumping on private properties and alleyways in the city, which could include imposing fines.

Pradeepkumar Elayath, administrative services manager for the City of Artesia, said that illegal dumping has been a problem on the city’s alleyways and behind housing complexes.

Mayor Manalo suggested that members of the Neighborhood Watch could add inspecting local alleyways to their duties.

“If people are interested to help, we can have an alley watch or something and neighbors keep an extra eye out for illegal dumpers and that might help,” he said. “I know it’s a serious problem and whatever staff can come up with and see what other cities are doing that might be innovative and helpful.”

The next Artesia City Council meeting is scheduled for July 11. For more information, call (562) 865-6262 or go to www.artesia.us.