Greasin' with Raymond

I have finally gotten through reviewing three years' worth of Raymond Lee's expense reports from his old gig as city manager in Greeley, Colorado – employment that ended before he was named a finalist for his current job as city administrator in Portland. The goal of this tedious exercise was to corroborate or disprove the persistent reports that Lee was terminated from his Colorado gig (and took his two top "cabinet members" out the door with him) on account of his extravagant spending of taxpayer dollars for his personal comfort. Generous readers enabled me to foot the bill to get the receipts, literally, from Greeley through public record requests.

The documents corroborate the reports of lavish spending. Although we'll probably never know for sure what happened that led to the end of his tenure in Greeley, Lee did spend an obscene amount of that city's money on himself. As we've already seen, he burned through many tens of thousands on executive coaches, staff retreats, and attendance at conferences all over the country. The City of Greeley paid for his car, his newspaper subscriptions, his data storage overruns, even his iPhone case. A town of about 101,000 people probably would not expect to foot the bill for all that. It would make sense that at some point, they'd stop the bleeding. 

I've covered the travel here, and the coaching and retreats here. Today's post takes a look at another realm in which Lee's spending may have rubbed his politician bosses the wrong way. That is, the dozens of free breakfasts and lunches that Lee scarfed down in "business meetings" in local restaurants during the portion of the year in which he was actually in Greeley rather than gallivanting around the country. As my grandmother might have put it, the guy had a hollow leg.

The first thing that jumps out from Lee's city credit card bills are how many local business meals Lee conducted. My amateur count puts it at 186 meals on the taxpayers' dime over the 34-month period January 2023 to October 2025. That works out to about 5.5 a month, or 65.6 a year. If Lee were in the office every day, that might not be too bad, but remember that he took about a dozen out-of-town trips on the taxpayers' dime every year as well. Taking that into account at, say, three days per trip, and assuming four weeks of vacation and personal time off, it works out to Raymond eating at the taxpayers' expense about every third day when he was in his City Hall office.

* Partial Year

Virtually all of the "meetings" were one on one, with Lee and just one other person in attendance. The average tab for the two diners was about $50. Perhaps surprisingly, the majority of his fellow noshers were certain members of the Greeley City Council. The council over there is six councilors plus the mayor. Raymond's chow-down meet-ups were with only three of the council. In 2023 and most of 2024, they were Brett Payton, who's since left the council; Dale Hall, who's now the mayor; and Johnny Olson, who's still on the council. In 2024, when Payton left, he was replaced in Raymond's gustatory rotation by Melissa McDonald, who was elected to the council at that time.

* Partial Year; Some Receipts Missing

Each ate with Lee at a different location. With Payton, it was always breakfast at Epic Egg. With Hall, it was lunch at Kenny's Steak House, although once in a while they'd go to Coyote's Southwestern Grill. Olson got fed many a lunch at Ambrosia Asian Bistro. McDonald was the cheapest date of the group, with breakfast at Doug's Diner.

The lunch meetings of Lee and Hall at Kenny's, a beloved local eatery, were noteworthy. In 2023, it was mostly $20 cheeseburgers, but early in 2024, one of them decided it was time to upgrade to the 7-ounce filet mignon, at $30.99. It's not clear from the receipts whether it was Lee or Hall who devoured that entree, but on two occasions, they each ate one, and it was on the bill a couple of times when Lee had lunch at Kenny's with a former council member, Sandi Elder. If I had to guess, it was Raymond downing the filet, around 10 times.

Sadly, Kenny's closed in October 2024, and funny thing, at that point Hall didn't need to meet with Lee so much any more. After a couple of much cheaper lunches at Coyote's, the two of them didn't meet up on Raymond's expense account again. Their last lunch on Lee's card was that October.

Another thing I couldn't help but notice on Lee's expense account was how much bacon he ate. It seems like he ordered a side of bacon with just about everything. Counting his travel meals (which are not  otherwise in the totals discussed in this post), there are 59 receipts in the 34-month period that specifically mention bacon.

There was a slight dip in the bacon notations in 2024, but remember, that was the heyday of the filet mignon at Kenny's, and I believe that entree came wrapped in bacon as the standard presentation.

* Partial Year

One other tidbit caught my eye. The story from Greeley is that Lee had a private bathroom installed in his office for his exclusive use. It's not been possible for me to verify those reports, and the City Hall building is now being demolished, but on July 16, 2024, Raymond did have lunch at Coyote's with an Adrian from Top Notch Plumbing, a commercial plumbing company in Greeley. Hmmm.

Finally, as I completed my review of Lee's expenses, I came across several more instances in which he couldn't correctly do the math of adding a tip. I've written about this before, here. There were seven of these errors in rudimentary arithmetic in the 34 months at issue. 

It's astounding that this is Portland's highest paid city executive, with a compensation package worth $535,700 a year. It seems to me that Mayor Wilson is a poor judge of talent.

Anyway, I suppose the next task on the list should be to see how much taxpayer money Lee is burning through in Portland. It's been five and a half months. I'm sure he's fattening his résumé as well as himself, looking forward to the day when he can move back to Texas and be a honcho in Dallas or Houston city government. 

Meanwhile, not many tears are being shed in Greeley over his departure. Except perhaps at Epic Egg, where the fancy-suit count has dropped dramatically.