The next year, as Anderson urged the council to allow Nordstrom to move to The Gateway, the council paid $20,000 for outside consultants to advise them. Those consultants said Anderson was right and Nordstrom should be allowed to move away from Main Street.

The council, however, overwhelmingly voted against the move.

In 2004 Anderson was pushing a plan to allow street artists at Pioneer Park while the council wanted to ban those artists.

With the city attorney supporting Anderson, the council spent $6,000 to hire attorney Randy Dryer to advise them on whether they could ban the artists from the park, among other First Amendment issues. After Dryer's advice, which was not made public, the council sided with the mayor and allowed the artists.

The latest incarnation of consultant spending has yet to play out. Anderson's administration has proposed new laws that would provide greater protection for the city's taxicab companies.

Unsatisfied with Anderson's plans — some two or three years in the making — the council paid an independent consultant $14,671 to study the issue. That consultant put a dagger through many of Anderson's recommendations and suggested that instead of providing more protection for existing cab companies, the city should open up the market for greater competition.

The council is taking public comment on the taxicab issue and hasn't decided what it will do.

The current City Council hasn't been as eager to hire consultants as were it predecessors. For instance, in Deedee Corradini's eight years as mayor the City Council spent $104,000 on outside consultants.

By preserving a budget to hire consultants, the council can maintain a smaller full-time staff, thus cutting its costs.

"We've purposely kept our staff small to save money," Councilman Dave Buhler said.

Council members acknowledge there are times when they don't take their consultants' advice but say that doesn't mean the advice was worthless. Ultimately elected officials are accountable to the public for their decisions.

"You have to live with yourself and you have to answer to the general public. Sometimes you just make gut calls," Christensen said. "If it were all up to the consultants why would you have elected officials?"

Added Buhler: "We're not hiring a consultant to make hard decisions for us, we're hiring them to give us information and help analyze things."

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E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com