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Syracuse City IT director warns staffing gaps and cloud licensing drive proposed budget jump
Summary
City IT Director Dave Prowek told councilors that four vacancies, reliance on long‑term consultants and new cloud licensing for Microsoft 365 and Azure account for much of a roughly 41% proposed year‑over‑year rise in the IT operating budget.
Syracuse City Director of IT Dave Prowek told the City Council that the Information Technology Department faces persistent staffing shortages and rising cloud licensing costs that together explain a large proposed increase in the department's operating budget.
Prowek said the department currently has four vacant positions, relies on long‑term consultants to keep services running, and is carrying new recurring costs from a recent enterprise migration to Microsoft 365 and increased Azure backup and recovery services. “We have 4 different vacancies,” he said. He added that the Police Department migration accounts for a substantial portion of the licensing increase and that cloud backup and Azure lines are new operating costs that previously were capital expenses.
Council members pressed for detail after calculating what they described as a roughly 41% year‑over‑year increase in the IT operating budget between fiscal 2025 and the proposed 2026 budget. Prowek told the council the Police…
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