Kelowna’s city staff lose Air Miles personal benefit from work-related travel

Pay telephone booths are long gone from the Kelowna landscape and they’re not likely to come back, city staff say. 

So municipal rules governing the placement of such telephones on public land are no longer needed and should be expunged with a bit of regulatory housekeeping, staff suggest in a report going to council on Monday. 

“There are no more phone booths in the city,” finance director Joe Sass says in the report. “Telecom providers removed all of these in the early 2000s, and this policy is no longer valid.

“Staff also see no future prospect of the return of telephone booths and so rescinding this policy is the recommended course of action,” Sass says. 

A few other outdated city provisions and policies are also recommended for the dumpster. 

An existing policy lets staff accumulate airline travel bonus points such as Air Miles when flying somewhere on municipal business, and then use those points for their own personal travel later on. This is allowed “in recognition of the fact that much of the (municipally-related) travel occurs on personal time,” the existing policy states. 

However, Sass says the policy should be scrapped because it is “no longer relevant”. That’s because municipal travel arrangements are now booked in a way that does not involve Air Miles or other such travel bonus schemes, he says. 

“Procurement credit cards are quite commonly used now and there is no implication of Air Miles,” Sass says. “In addition, those staff that may not have a procurement credit card themselves often have other staff transact on their behalf for travel costs, like accommodation and transportation. 

“The end result of this current processing of expenditures means that there is no need to address the subject of Air Miles as it is materially irrelevant,” Sass says. 

A lengthy current policy dating back to 2010 that, among other things, provides a per diem rate of $70 intended to cover “all meals, gratuities, personal telephone and other miscellaneous costs” for employees travelling on city business should also be repealed, Sass says. 

“Staff recommend this policy be rescinded in part due to its outdated content and the fact that travel expenses are most commonly an operational and administrative process task for the transactions associated with travel,” Sass says. 

It’s unclear if that means the $70 per diem itself has been abolished or the limit increased. The Courier is attempting to get clarification from the city.