“Duval DOGE,” the special City Council committee seeking ways to trim local government costs, currently is focusing on government growth and unspent funds.
Council Member Ron Salem, chairman of the committee, says $90 million of capital improvements have not been done.
To keep the public up to date, the committee has a dashboard showing its work, posted on Jacksonville.com.
A list of growth in various city departments also has been provided to the committee by council auditors and that is being examined to make sure all the growth is warranted.
There is another bit of data Eye on Jacksonville believes should be examined by the committee. It is the city’s own workload indicators, included in the annual budget.
They purport to show how much work each agency is doing or should be doing.
In some cases, it is easy. The permitting department’s job, for example, is to issue permits. It is relatively easy to measure how many applications it gets and how soon the permits are issued. Mayor Donna Deegan, to her credit, even publishes such figures on her “transparency dashboard” on the city’s website.
You can also track things such as the miles of streets paved or sidewalks repaired, but the indicators depend on how much is needed.
They count items like pool attendance, which by the way is declining, and library materials borrowed, which fluctuates.
From 2019-23 the number of animals impounded went down 40 percent and the number of license tags dispensed was down 7 percent. Does that indicate room to cut?
The committee is not looking at police and fire services, even though those are the largest expenses in the general fund budget.
Perhaps they should.
Over the period 2019-2023, fires increased 27percent and calls for emergency assistance went up 30 percent.
But while the number of police officers increased, the number of calls for service dropped 9 percent, and the crime rate was on a steady downward trend. The number of arrests fell.
During that period the cost of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office increased by 17 percent and it took another big jump in Deegan’s first budget.
Eye is firmly opposed to defunding the police, which liberals constantly are demanding. But adding large numbers of officers when the workload is decreasing may not be sensible either. We have been unable to get the police to talk about the subject.
While looking at capital outlay, it also might be helpful for the committee to examine big ticket items like septic tank replacement, which never has been properly vetted, the Emerald Trail and the Skyway Express/bus operations.
With a total local government budget of $9 billion, not including schools, there have to be ways to increase efficiency and productivity. Doing so would accrue to the benefit of taxpayers.
