Expense account increase

–Scott Neufeld North Shore outlook

District of North Van councillors will have a little more wiggle room in their expense accounts thanks to a new policy passed at a recent council meeting. After comparing their policy with other municipalities district staff recommended bumping the maximum limit for attending other conferences at $15,000. The mayor and councillors’ business expenditures were raised to $5,000 and $2,000 from $3,000 and $1,000 respectively. Mayor Richard Walton said the new policy will allow individual councillors to attend conferences on their own, not necessarily the more traditional municipal conferences.“If we have five or six (council members) going to the same conferences I don’t know if that’s really the best use,” he said. “The new policy will allow us to attend a diversity (of conferences).”Raising the expense limits will allow council to attend more workshops, Walton said. The benefit is that with each conference councillors bring back fresh ideas to tackle the district’s problems, he said.“Some councillors over the years have not placed a particularly high value on (conferences) which is something I have trouble with,” he said. “Some have traditionally spent most of what’s available to them, some have done very little.”