Mayor delves into expense explanation

Mayor Nolan Crouse will be bringing forward his own audit of his expenses for council’s consideration.

In the wake of questions being raised about the mayor’s expenses this week – it appears he charged some items to both the city and the Capital Region Board in his roles as mayor and board chair – Crouse has spent a good deal of time going back over his calendar and expense claims.

While Crouse said it’s too early to share numbers, he said he’s bringing about half-a-dozen pages to hand out to his council colleagues when he sees them for the standing committee on finance meeting Tuesday.

The matter won’t be discussed during that committee meeting, he said, but he’ll give them the information.

“We’re going to find that there are many expenses that go both ways,” he said.

City administration is set to do a review of Crouse’s expenses and he says they can have access to his CRB expenses as well.

City staff declined to comment on the review process, instead referring all queries to Crouse.

Crouse said he hasn’t talked to the city manager about what administration is going to do for review. However, after his audit this week, he says there needs to be a better procedure put in place to review his expense claims and clarify ambiguities in city policy.

He said it’s not worth the money to hire someone to independently audit his expenses.

“We’re talking about a few hundred dollars,” he said of the errors made.

Crouse figures he’s found about nine instances of what’s been dubbed “double dipping” that need to be addressed.

Spreadsheet formula errors that appeared in a couple of months of his CRB expenses are being paid back on his most recent submission, totalling $507.97.

Crouse has paid back $1,200 to the CRB for some per diems, but now says there’s some confusion about whether the city might owe him some money as a result.

He previously caught and paid back double-charged mileage for a parade in Redwater, otherwise he has not yet paid back any of the other apparent mistakes. He says he recently realized he hadn’t even submitted more than $900 worth of expense claims for the month of May.

“I think the accusation of wrong-doing is absolutely unfair,” Crouse said. He could accept an accusation of lack of thoroughness, but not an accusation of fraud.

Asked how someone known to be as meticulous as him could let his record-keeping slip like this, he didn’t have an answer. He did note as he geared up for the 2013 municipal election it appeared his handle on his expenses loosened.

“I’ve asked that question myself,” Crouse said. “I don’t know why I was sloppy with expense reports.”

Crouse said he’s contemplating changing his expense procedures and delegating the task of preparing them to his assistant.

While Crouse’s St. Albert expenses are available online, Coun. Sheena Hughes had to submit a freedom of information request to get his CRB-related expenses.

Crouse said while he’s not sure why that might be, he suspects it’s because he was billing his expenses through his company, Crouse Developments, so it was a private company under contract.

He added his fellow councillors didn’t ask him directly for them.

Jerry Ward, a spokesperson for Municipal Affairs, said there are no provincial regulations with regards to municipal councillors' remuneration or expenses, noting those issues are usually dealt with at the local level through municipal policies.

Ward said, at this point, Municipal Affairs is not intending to look into the affairs of St. Albert, but if citizens are concerned they could petition the minister to do so.

“They can ask the minister to hold an inquiry, which is usually an inspection, and that’s basically to go over the administrative procedures and other policies and bylaws and operations, etc.,” Ward said.

However, a valid petition of electors representing 20 per cent of the population of St. Albert would be required to have the provincial government start an inquiry.