PAYBACK TIME: Minneapolis police racked up more than $1 million in training costs in preparation for the Republican National Convention, finance department staff told City Council members at Monday’s Ways and Means Committee meeting. The breakdown: $340,000 in overtime, $136,000 in comp time, and $628,000 in regular time.

That doesn’t take in labor costs during the RNC and, as Council Member Elizabeth Glidden pointed out, it also doesn’t include one particularly pesky expense line: pension payouts related to police overtime. As with policing costs Minneapolis incurred after the I-35W bridge collapsed, staff said, the city has no assurance of reimbursement for pension outlays arising from law-enforcement overtime during the Republican National Convention.

Minneapolis Finance Director Pat Born told MnIndy the complexity of an unusual pension plan for cops hired through the 1970s works against easy reimbursement for “direct costs” and makes evaluators’ eyes glaze over. That’s what happened with FEMA (whose refusal to reimburse bridge-related expenses, barring a successful city appeal, will cost Minneapolis nearly $800,000) and Born promises that eyes are sure to glaze again as the city tries to collect on RNC police overtime pension costs from the U.S. Justice Department via the City of St. Paul.

WORK OF FICTION: That issue came up in a second-quarter financial summary after a generally positive report from the state auditor on the city’s finances. But the audit did highlight areas in which city financial controls need improvement. There’s nothing, for example, stopping staffers from inventing fictitious city employees and paying them, the report says. And cash taken in by city parking garages could end up somewhere other than city coffers.

Here’s some nonfiction: So far this year, a St. Paul parking meter reader went to jail for taking home $34,000 in parking meter collections, and a Hennepin County clerk got 30 days for fixing her own parking tickets and related fines to the tune of more than $5,000. On the bright side, at least fictional employees don’t have real pockets to put stolen cash in.

IT’S A SETUP: The committee spent the better part of an hour Monday debating whether to hold a special public comment meeting on the financial aspects of proposed changes to the city’s Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP) — the subject of a longstanding power struggle between City Hall and city neighborhoods. Chair Paul Ostrow argued that NRP’s finances should be discussed in the context of the city’s broader budget, adding that the public would have its say at required public hearings in December and next spring. But City Council Member Sandy Colvin Roy said constituents had felt constrained at past hearings to speak only on the program’s structure. “I don’t think it costs us very much [to hold a comment meeting],” she added.

“There is a cost to this,” Council Member Betsy Hodges countered, seeming to foresee an evening rife with soapbox speeches by both council members and residents unhinged from financial reality. “It’s a setup for us and a setup for them.” In the end the motion passed, and a special public comment period on NRP finances will take place during the committee’s Sept. 22 meeting.

PORKY’S: Another longstanding flashpoint between elected officials and Minneapolis residents was the new Porky’s restaurant on Central Avenue Northeast, where fast-food drive-thru service flew in the face of zoning rules and pedestrian-oriented neighborhood plans. Porky’s prevailed last year with the support of Ostrow and Mayor R.T. Rybak, who reportedly said he “would walk across glass on my knees for Porky’s onion rings.”

Neighbors cried foul, some feeling stung enough to boycott the place once it was built — and indeed the restaurant’s spacious, retro interior often looks empty. Now bright yellow signs posted along the sidewalk indicate Porky’s is trying to beef up drive-through business by offering a 10 percent discount to customers who place their orders from their cars.

Which goes to show — to paraphrase Council Member Gary Schiff at a City Planning Commission hearing on Porky’s — it’s bad karma to mess with the city’s zoning code.

Or maybe Porky’s just needs to ditch the drive-through and put in a crawl-on-glass lane instead.