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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 Department migration accounts for about $297,000 of the increase and that an Azure line reflects roughly a $110,000 increase; other Microsoft 365 licensing covers a significant share of the remainder. “We entered into a new three‑year commitment with Microsoft for both the City and the Police Department,” Prowek said, describing the shift to a unified platform for about 2,400 users.
Why it matters: the change shifts costs that were once capital expenditures for in‑house servers into recurring operating expenses for cloud services, which affects year‑to‑year comparisons and the department's operating baseline.
The council sought explanation for the department's heavy use of outside consultants. Prowek said recruitment challenges — a limited salary range, a residency requirement and a competitive local market — make it difficult to hire experienced IT staff. “The IT job market is still pretty strong, especially for experienced people,” he said, adding that some long‑standing contractors have been with the city for decades and provide institutional knowledge the department depends on.
Councilors and administration staff described a deliberate, if incomplete, strategy to reduce that reliance by reorganizing and coordinating IT, API and Digital Services to transfer knowledge into fully staffed city teams. An administration representative said the reorganization is intended to create role clarity and cross‑division collaboration so that in‑house staff can absorb work currently performed by contractors.
Councilors also questioned the practice of budgeting for positions that remain vacant for years, then shifting the funds into professional services. “If we've got a position that's been open for 7 years, why do we even pretend? Why don't we commit to contracting that out rather than doing a line here that makes it look like we've got people in house,” a councilor asked. Prowek and administration staff explained that civil service rules and testing schedules can create windows for hiring; the city keeps positions funded in hopes a civil service list will produce candidates.
Other details discussed: the department limits overtime to under about 2% of its budget, and most overtime relates to manual payroll runs; the water fund reimburses part of IT staffing related to water billing and systems; and several capital requests are delayed, which Prowek said has shifted work and altered the department's capital versus operating spending profile.
The council did not take any formal vote on the IT budget or positions during the discussion; members asked for more detailed budget line breakdowns and for the IT audit referenced by staff to be scheduled so capital requests and the proposed reorganization can be reviewed in context.
The discussion concluded with staff and council agreeing to provide more detailed line‑item explanations of the proposed operating increases, clearer mappings of cloud licensing versus application costs, and timelines for the reorganization and hiring efforts.
