Ken:

Your points are well reasoned.  As client, I have no problem with you
wanting to price the work reasonably and to reduce the number of
meetings.  I would not trade my management problems for yours,
ever...real people and materials are soooo messsy.  In practice, I do
reduce the required number of meetings when I have confidence in the
contractor's ability to do the work and solve the unexpected problems.
I understand that that may leave the contractor with a marginally larger
profit, supposedly at my expense.  But, I get to sleep at night...I get
to concentrate on stuff that may not go well and I don't need to spend
so much time in meetings.

I like all those terribly tacky places you mentioned too.  But I'm much
too cool to say it where anyone would notice!

Did I ever tell you that my daughter accused me of being terminally
uncool?  I responded, "I was cool when it meant something."

-jc