The open forum at Monday night’s Prairie Village city council meeting turned into an airing of grievances as a 20-year resident of the city chastised the council for what she categorized as excessive spending on travel and dining.

Jori Nelson, a Shawnee Mission School District teacher and mother of two children, took the podium and delivered the results of her analysis of travel, conference and meeting expenses incurred by the mayor and council over the past ten years.

The total, in her estimation: $313,339.

“This has gone unchecked for far too long,” she told the council.

Nelson said council members had booked luxury hotel rooms and eaten unreasonably expensive meals that “I could never afford.” She cited receipts for an $18 glass of wine and a $14 cosmopolitan as examples of reimbursements taxpayers shouldn’t have footed the bill for. Though she didn’t mention any names during the open forum, Nelson said two people were responsible for 23 percent of the expenses she’d examined.

(Note: Nelson is sending has sent us the expense records she obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request. We’ll release more information once we’ve had a chance to work through the documents).

As a means of illustrating what she views as excessive spending, Nelson noted that other area cities, including Leawood and Mission, have smaller travel budgets than Prairie Village. But those cities also compensate their council people and mayor, which Prairie Village does not.

City Administrator Quinn Bennion said Monday the city’s current $21 million budget has approximately $41,000 allocated for “Conferences and Training,” the line item where the expenses Nelson examined are recorded. That $41,000 includes not only travel to national conferences, but local training and networking events as well.

Mission, which is less than half the size of Prairie Village, has a budget for lodging, meals, commercial travel, mileage, and transportation of $20,735. Mission also pays more than $45,000 to its mayor and council according to 2007 figures.

Leawood, with approximately 8,000 more citizens than Prairie Village’s 22,000, spends just under $19,000 a year on meetings and training. It also paid its council and mayor $107,496 in 2007.

Bennion said the city had never exceeded its annual Conferences and Training budget allocation in the period examined by Nelson.

Her ten minute speech to the council was greeted by a loud round of applause from more than a dozen supporters who accompanied her to the meeting. After she left the chamber, council member David Morrison followed her out to congratulate her.