Brampton residents and councillors said they were dumbfounded after Mayor Susan Fennell appeared to contradict herself this week over her use of first-class airfare.

Fennell told the Toronto Sun that she would pay back the city $3,030 for first-class airfare for a trip she took to Iqaluit in 2010, saying, “I don’t believe in business-class fares while flying in North America.”

In an emailed statement to the Star, Fennell explained that she was in Iqaluit attending a board meeting of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, with additional responsibilities as chair of the FCM’s Ontario caucus.

Fennell earlier this week defended her office’s travel expenses — more than $50,000 last year — saying they comply with council policy requiring economy fares because flight passes were used. Flight passes are pre-paid credits for future travel available in a range of fare categories, often used by business travellers who need flexibility.

“The decision to buy a flight pass and which flight pass is purchased is made with (an) estimate of the work travel ahead, for a full year, for up to 8 people, in different departments,” Fennell said in the statement. “This decision is based on best value for dates and demands known at the time.”

When plans change and there are unused credits remaining, Fennell wrote, a decision must be made on whether to use it or lose it. “This did happen with the Ottawa flight cost. That flight pass would not normally be used for a short distance flight.”

Documents obtained by the Star show that the trip for Fennell and two staff to Ottawa (just over an hour) referenced in her email wasn’t the only short flight billed at the same high price. Four additional fares for herself and staff to Saskatoon (about 3 hours, 16 minutes) and Bagotville, Que., (3 hours with a transfer) were billed at the same amount, for a total of $12,929.

This despite Fennell’s statement to the Star that, over the year of usage, the average cost per flight “was predicted to be the best value.”

Numerous other flights in Canada over $1,500 were routinely expensed by Fennell and her staff, although rules city council adopted in 2011 said economy airfare should be used on all flights less than five hours.

“She and her staff have charged Brampton taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars for airfare, like her $1,850 ticket to Ottawa and back, over $1,800 for her ticket to Saskatoon, over $1,800 to fly to Quebec and dozens of others,” Councillor John Sprovieri said Thursday.

“And now that she’s caught, she picks one flight to pay back, saying she does not believe in business-class fares. Is she joking? Does she think Brampton taxpayers are fools?”

Councillor Elaine Moore had a similar reaction.

“The Brampton taxpayer is not gullible. I don’t care if she used flight passes to book these trips — $1,847 to fly to Ottawa is a business-class fare, just like all the other fares on her expenses. An economy fare to Ottawa, even if you book it three or four weeks in advance, is $300, $400 tops.”

Moore said Fennell is aware of the FCM meetings, responsible for much of her travel, months in advance. “She says she has to go to these meetings, so why isn’t she booking an economy fare ticket in advance just like councillors do?”

After Fennell’s three first-class trips to Asia in a recent four-month period, council banned all first-class travel.

Brampton resident Sandip Rana, a senior finance executive, says Fennell’s travel expenses wouldn’t fly in his Toronto company.

“The $1,847 for a flight to Ottawa is blatant misuse of taxpayer funds. It doesn’t matter if it was bought using flight passes, it is still taxpayer funds being spent to acquire those flight passes.”

“I can say that as someone who travels for business I would not spend $1,847 on a flight to Ottawa, especially if I knew weeks in advance that I was planning on going there. I may not be accountable to taxpayers, but I am accountable to shareholders.

“With all these travel costs being incurred by the mayor, we need to ask ourselves — why is the mayor travelling so much? Is it really benefiting Brampton residents or is she just travelling the world on the taxpayers’ dime?”

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Fennell’s expense statements, obtained by the Star through a freedom of information request, showed she and her staff charged taxpayers more than $185,000 for trips between 2008 and October 2013 — more than $50,000 of that in the first 10 months of 2013.

Chief administrative officer John Corbett, hired at the end of 2012, told the Star Tuesday that in the past, “the mayor was authorized to approve her own travel.” But new rules recently passed by council require such expenses to be reviewed by the treasurer or deputy treasurer, Corbett said.

Fennell has not responded to the Star’s request to provide a copy of the receipts for her flight passes, to show they were purchased at the lowest fare class. Nor has she explained why she is not reimbursing some of her hotel charges that went as high as $700 a night.

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