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In our continuing efforts to bring more sunshine to Raleigh city government, this is our second annual edition of what we’ll now call the Expense Report. Below you will find the full documents of the expense reports, credit card statements and requests for reimbursements from city department heads, the mayor and city council members.
Below this short blog post you’ll be able to read through how the city spends your tax dollars on conferences, trainings, lots of batteries, snacks for the tireless city employees, carwashes and a number of other, occasionally odd, things.
Find anything interesting? Please leave a comment below.
Our request last year did not return nearly as much as this year, which likely means that we’re getting much better at asking about what we’re looking for. As always, the city’s public affairs department was very responsive to our request and we got this batch of documents within a matter of a few short weeks. Not bad for a request of this nature.
We did redact two credit card numbers that were left in the material given to the Record.
Trainings and workshops top the list of expenditures, topping out at more than $20,000. The convention center spent several hundred dollars on batteries. There’s a handful of carwashes billed to the city and a healthy dose of donuts. For the record, none of those donut expenditures came from Raleigh Police Chief Harry Dolan. And two department heads bought about $300 worth of books from Barnes & Nobles, including such titles as Thank God it’s Monday!: How to Create a Workplace You and Your Customers Love, Mastering Communication (two copies), and Verbal Judo: The Gentle Art of Persuasion.
