Not content to rake in an outrageous salary of $228,409 plus benefits — highest among mayors in Canada — Brampton’s Mayor Susan Fennell has been stiffing taxpayers for spending large and small.

The Star’s San Grewal reports that over a three-year period, Fennell billed taxpayers $186,000 for everything from orchestra tickets ($1,500), to Mandarin lessons ($1,326 plus $531 for a Toronto hotel stay for the lessons) and $2,162 for personalized barbecue aprons. She also had an eye out for the pennies as she claimed $2 for an airport luggage cart and $1 for an iTunes download.

On top of this, Fennell and staff spent $185,000 over five years on travel — travelling expensively with air passes on short trips. Airfare to Ottawa? $1,847. Four-day hotel stay in Whistler: $2,832.

Last month, Grewal reported that Fennell charged $9,400 to her city credit card for a 2008 Miami trip she says was for hospitality for the city’s orchestra. Brampton Symphony CEO Michael Todd denies he approved it.

All this from a politician cashing a paycheque fatter than the premier’s. And all this is happening in a political climate where constituents are supposedly disgusted by such obvious excesses.

Based on 2012 salary figures we can readily compare Canada-wide, Fennell got $162,839 from Brampton PLUS $50,888 from Peel Region PLUS $14,682 from the police services board PLUS $23,524 as a car allowance PLUS $45,726 for a driver.

PLUS, her city salary is one-third tax free — a benefit most municipalities in the GTA have given up and one that boosts an already too-high salary to an equivalent stratospheric $260,000, plus benefits. And she can’t find a toonie for a luggage cart at Pearson.

For comparison, Toronto’s mayor was paid $172,000.

And yet, Fennell has survived with only passing references in Toronto’s swirling mass of media.

It seems media hog Rob Ford is the best thing that’s happened to Fennell. Ford’s misadventures soak up all the attention. Fennell should send Ford some of her salary, with a note reading: “Thanks for the distraction.”

It’s not like she would miss the cash — not when you head up Canada’s ninth largest city but take home the biggest paycheque, all to run Brampton, a sprawling nondescript burg sitting atop Mississauga.

If Fennell ran the joint with the aplomb of, say, Hazel McCallion, her neighbour to the south, one might excuse her excesses. But, day by day, evidence mounts that she runs a loose ship.

The latest eyebrow-raiser came this week. As much as $766 million worth of capital projects are sitting idle in the city. That’s chump change for Toronto, but in Brampton it represents 670 projects that councillors claim range from bridge repairs to community centres.

Budgets were approved, tax money allocated, but no shovels in the ground for many. And no one can really explain why — except to say that municipalities routinely fail to get projects going for years after council approved them.

However, most often staff knows exactly where the logjam is, and why. In Brampton, it’s the staff who are raising the concern.

In fact, why does Brampton rank at the bottom of 23 municipalities surveyed on this very disparity in 2011 by the C.D. Howe Institute?

Don’t worry, says Fennell. Nothing untoward. Nothing out of the ordinary.

That’s been Fennell’s approach to many indiscretions when they first surface, under her watch, or because of her lax oversight or missing sense of rectitude.

And, too often, there’s been reason for concern.

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Since 2010, closer scrutiny of Fennell’s brand of missing leadership — especially as it relates to spending taxpayers’ money — reveals a municipal leader out of touch with the current imperative to curb spending, especially amounts directed to self-aggrandizement.

In addition, her views on transit, and now, infrastructure spending, betray her as someone whose 14 years of experience is time wasted. Removing an incumbent mayor is extremely difficult. Bramptonians should embrace the challenge leading to the Oct. 27 civic elections.

Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Email: rjames@thestar.ca

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