Political observers are questioning the cost of a recent City Council mailing blitz.

The taxpayer-financed mailings, which were sent out this month at the direction of the speaker of the council, Gifford Miller, were printed in four different versions and included glossy full-color fliers, as well as smaller-format brochures that came in roughly 40 versions.

Both types contained photographs of Mr. Miller – who is one of four Democrats campaigning against Mayor Bloomberg – and many mentions of his name. The smaller-format mailings featured close-up photos of Mr. Miller standing with the local council member. They were sent out roughly two weeks before the start of the “blackout” period that bars candidates from sending mass mailings through their government offices in the 90 days leading up to an election, although some arrived as late as the deadline, June 15.

While the council’s mailing appears to be in compliance with applicable laws and in concert with the way many elected politicians handle franking, it has raised eyebrows in the past few weeks among some of those who are following the campaign.

Several lobbyists and political analysts contacted by The New York Sun who did not want to be named said their conservative back-of-the-envelope calculations of design, printing, and postage put the cost at more than the $37,000 that council officials said was paid.

Political consultants familiar with the direct-mailing industry said that based on their knowledge of the mailings, the price seemed like a rock-bottom deal.

“That sounds like a low number to me,” a veteran Democratic political consultant, Hank Sheinkopf, said. “It means that the vendors doing the work made very little money.”

Another political consultant, Scott Levenson, said: “I would say that if the council spent $37,000 on these mailings, that the city got an awful lot of bang for its buck.”

Messrs. Sheinkopf and Levenson said the council’s dollar amount was plausible, depending on the number of pieces of mail that were sent.

A spokesman for Mr. Miller, Stephen Sigmund, said last week that more than 100,000 mailings were sent out and that the tab came to roughly $37,000. He did not have more precise numbers yesterday, but said he hoped to have the information later this week. He has defended the mailings, saying they are a way of communicating with constituents.

“Look, all of these mailings are appropriate and legal and the right thing to do to make sure that New Yorkers get a budget that protects their priorities,” Mr. Sigmund said.

Last Tuesday, one of Mr. Miller’s rivals in the Democratic mayoral primary, C. Virginia Fields, wrote letters to both the city’s Campaign Finance Board and Conflicts of Interest Board requesting investigations of the mailings.

In a letter to the conflicts board, a lawyer for Ms. Fields called the mailings a “blatant attempt to use his public office for private gain; using his taxpayer funded office to fulfill his own private political ambitions.”