Kyle City Limits
by BRENDA STEWART
Lazy summer afternoons just scream a tall drink and a good read, so on Sunday I filled up an icy tumbler and settled in with a stack of city employee credit card statements which had been introduced to the council last Tuesday night. Hey, we all have our own ideas of what constitutes a good read. Anyway, I began flipping through the paper trail, getting a bird’s eye view of the daily grind of running our fair city. Some of it actually cracked me up, parts baffled me, and there were whole areas that piqued my curosity. But honestly, I’m not rendering judgement. It’s so much deeper than I even care to delve into today but I found out some interesting stuff and I know you’re never going to download the agenda and read it yourself, so I’ve culled out some items that reinforce my sentiment that Kyle is one interesting place to live.
I was actually surprised to find that over a dozen city employees have city-issued credit cards with credit limits between $3,000 and $5,000 a month. And, although they were issued with the implied edict that employees should not “spend freely,” it is widely known that it was “policed by the ethics” of the users, rather than any kind of oversight board. No checks and balances. Well, actually, that’s not true. There were balances. Big ones that we carried month after month. And then, on occasion, we’d cut a fat check to pay off all kinds of things.
It looks like we did a bit of shopping at Cavendar’s Boots on a couple of occasions, to the tune of just over $750, and then complimented it with $200 worth of stuff from Shepler’s Western Wear. We shopped at Kohl’s and Payless Shoes, Lens.com and, my personal favorite, the Christian Gifts Outlet. We paid the City of Kyle and then the Town of Kyle a buck twice, and then we paid ourselves back. We bought a thousand dollar vending machine and $500 worth of poker chips. We dropped a hundred-fifty in Starbucks, bought some rodeo tickets and all kinds of crowns. From the wearing kind to the drinking kind – we gotcha covered.
I tell you what, the City of Kyle doesn’t seem to be missing many meals. From the humble group pizza feeding frenzy to swank nights out at Bordeaux’s and the Trattoria in Driftwood, we know how to eat. Maybe we’re trying to woo someone, or maybe it’s all those goodbye-we’re-going-to-miss-you dinners lately. Regardless, that’s where a good chunk of change is going. Oh, and to the donut account. Man, we eat a lot of donuts around here. But I was impressed that we kept if fairly local. Looks like they should name a sandwich after us at the Pie Company and put a plaque on the wall at Hitter’s.
And, I’m not saying that any of this it is wrong or any rules were broken. It was just an interesting read. But it would probably behoove us to take a more thorough look at the procurement process and perhaps put some controls in place to get a handle on what is actually being spent on what. The current council ran on a collective platform of transparency in government and I think that this is a great place to begin. So, let’s throw open those shutters and let some light in. We can discuss it over lunch.
