Trips to Downtown Chicago
Park District staff and commissioners attend an annual IPRA Conference with overnight hotel stays and all-expensed meals. IPRA (Illinois Park & Recreation Association) conference is a 3 day event.
From IPRA’s website: IAPD/IPRA Soaring to New Heights Conference holds the unique distinction of being the largest state park and recreation conference in the nation. The conference brings together thousands of professionals, Commissioners, and elected officials from around the state for three exciting days of quality educational programming, networking, and professional development.
Chicago is only 20 miles away from Oak Brook, yet, at least 9 Park District employees stayed overnight in downtown Chicago to attend a 3-day IPRA Conference. Expenses for hotels like Hyatt Regency and Swissotel plus meals, Uber rides, and SpotHero parking were all paid by taxpayers.
Staff and commissioners spend over $1000 a day on food a day at the same place when you add up all the charges on the credit cards.
Some restaurant choices include fine dining at Filini Restaurant that used to be in the Radisson Blu Aqua building downtown Chicago, or one of the Bottleneck Management restaurants in Chicago.
They also enjoyed a nice dinner at Palm Chicago, including commissioners: Filet Mignon and Lobster Gnocchi - dinner for 7 people was $492.24. Comes out to $70 a person. According to Park District meals policy, max cap on reimbursed dinners is $35 a person. Who is covering the balance?
Eight people for lunch for a total of almost $300. That is $37.50 a person. Max reimbursable is $25 per person for lunch. Did the people all reimburse the park district?
Another example is for breakfast at 8:15 am, Sharon Knitter (Commissioner President), Ivana Kelley (Commissioner) and Laure Kosey (Executive Director) have breakfast, the total comes out to $18.50 a person, breakfast max cap is $15. Are they paying the difference? Or does Laure Kosey just approve?
Seven people go out to eat for brunch, 1/27/24 is after checkout of the hotel, but eating at 11am is kind of late if there are sessions to attend, but this bill of $242.16 for 7 people, comes out to $34.50 a person. Breakfast max cap is $15 a person. Even if considered as lunch, lunch max cap is $25 a person. Again, these meals exceed cap.
For this meal, the receipt says 13 guests, but only 7 employees written on side for lunch at 11:49am. This impacts the dollar spent per employee.
