While the Dunedin City Council has to watch its pennies as it tries to rein in every possible cost and earn every possible dollar, the proposal to charge for charity sausage sizzles was an idea with little merit.
For the sake of $5000, notwithstanding the associated cost of handling and processing the money, council staff suggested charging schools, clubs and other not-for-profit groups a $16 fee for their sausage sizzles when food is being sold in public.
The fee was part of a move by the council's environmental health team to offset the rising cost of policing a growing number of fundraising events and community markets.
Commercial operator fees and food festival stall inspections were also included in a new range of charges.
Although for many $16 might seem a small amount, for community groups, sporting trip fund-raisers and the like it still takes a bite out of the profits of hard-won income.
Volunteers are working hard in a community-spirited way and need support, not discouragement.
Every dollar counts, both in reality and for morale purposes.
The Dunedin City Council can be criticised for coming up with the proposal in the first place, for being out of touch with common sense.
It can also be argued that it "backed down" when it agreed the $5000 raised by imposing the fee "wasn't worth the hassle".
But another way to look at the issue is that the annual plan processes worked as they should.
The proposal was presented to councillors as part of last week's council 2012-13 pre-draft annual and long-term plan meeting.
There, several councillors raised concerns, and a council team leader, Ros MacGill, was asked to prepare a report before the budget was signed off. Councillors were doing their job and council staff were responding.
Additionally, Otago Daily Times coverage brought the matter to public attention, with the reports being picked up by national media as well, and the council and councillors were able to receive feedback. Staff, and often councillors as well, are always in danger of feeding off one another.
They can easily lose touch with public sentiments and with other points of view.
This is a danger not just with the DCC, but with other organisations and government departments: Christchurch City Council is proving to be a clear case in point across several issues, including the pay of its chief executive.
At the modest $16-a-time level as a charge for public sausage sizzles, under the DCC's processes there remained further opportunities for the idea to be rejected.
Should the proposal have made it into the draft annual plan itself, the public would still have had the chance to make submissions before the fees were adopted, and councillors would have been able to alter any interim decisions.
Although this process is drawn out over several months, it is a substantial improvement on pre-annual plan days when council budget decisions were presented as a fait accompli.
What happens every year in the formal submission process, as well as informally before it actually begins, is that councillors - from every city and district - face both the overall pressure to limit rate increases as well as lobbying from interest groups exercised by particular projects and matters.
This has already started in Dunedin with issues such as road sealing, the Peninsula cycleway and so forth. It is here that the judgement of councillors and staff is singularly tested because the size of the rate increase burgeons all too easily through specific pressures.
Harder to curb are basic council operating and staff costs, and it is here the new chief executive, Paul Orders, has been making progress.
That momentum must be maintained if the council is to avoid becoming so desperate that it considers charges like the $16 impost on fund-raising sausage sizzles.
Mr Orders and the council cannot ignore all the small fry - like the $5000 it may have raised through this charge - if it is to whittle away the large increases facing the ratepayers of Dunedin.
Nevertheless, the charge on community groups was counter productive. It is good that sausage sizzle sense prevailed.
