The visible cost is the transfer itself: 712 million yuan a year from municipal and county budgets in 2009 (Jiang and Huang), over 170 million USD a year by 2013 (Zhuang), plus the interest the two budgets pay on village loans above the 2 percent charged to villages (Wang). The hidden costs sit in the village. Council members receive no pay and not even a lost-work allowance (Chen Hongtai); in 2010 there were 86,000 village-level and 172,000 sub-group council members (Jiang and Huang). Villagers are asked to sign questionnaires and satisfaction forms at 80 to 90 percent thresholds. Chen Yiyuan's 2018 fieldwork in one township documents the administrative weight that grew with the money: each reimbursement took a village accountant half a month of evidence (signed visit sheets, photographs, minutes) and 8 to 10 signatures in the right order; projects above 100,000 yuan must go to third-party tender, which cadres say raises costs about 30 percent, with 8,000-plus yuan for a tender agent and 3,000-plus for audit on a 100,000 yuan job, and villagers who once prepared the ground themselves no longer turn up; the fund also carried a patrol team (100,000 yuan a year) and three reserve cadres (2,500 yuan a month each) in a village of 2,000. From 2017, assessed sanitation work took over 300,000 yuan a year of a fund of 860,000, crowding out roads villagers still wanted. Frenkiel reports that village party secretaries, committees and indirectly county officials lose a large part of their discretionary power, accepted because the councils proved an efficient governance instrument. No source reports political capital spent by the city beyond the vice-mayor's mention of cadres with a 'dualistic' mindset who resisted.