City audit finds idling drives roughly a third of Fort Lauderdale’s fleet fuel spend; auditors recommend stricter rules and tech upgrades

Patrick Riley, the city auditor, presented the results of a performance audit of the city’s fuel consumption and billing, saying the review found “billing accuracy, adherence to the policy and standards manual, and consistent enforcement of the procedures” needed improvement. The audit covered consumption data from the EJ Ward and Samsara systems for October 2023 through September 2024 and billing for April 2023 through March 2024.

Riley said fleet services dispensed about 1.3 million gallons of fuel in FY24 at a cost of roughly $4 million and that the Samsara‑monitored vehicles showed about 337,000 gallons were attributable to idling during the audit period. “If you extrapolate that through the rest of the vehicles that don’t have the Samsara device, it’s approximately $1,400,000 related to idling,” he said. That translates to about 35% of total fuel cost in the audited year.

Riley outlined operational drivers and recommendations: the city’s idling policy lacks clear time thresholds, many vehicles either lack or have disabled start‑stop systems, and departments vary in policy enforcement. He recommended revising the idling policy to set measurable limits, increasing driver training and performance metrics, prioritizing automatic start‑stop features in future vehicle purchases and expanding fuel‑efficient and electric vehicles where feasible.

Commissioners and staff pressed for detail on scope and methods. Riley said the audit examined 100% of the fuel consumption data in the two systems and sampled billing invoices. He confirmed the fleet has about 1,271 eligible vehicles and the Samsara device is installed on 938 of them. He also noted the audit found individual vehicles idled for unusually long stretches in some cases—up to 11 hours in isolated examples.

City staff and commissioners accepted the audit’s findings and management indicated concurrence with the report’s recommendations and planned follow‑ups. The auditor said the office and management had an exit conference and incorporated management responses into the final report. The commission did not take a formal vote during the conference session; staff said they will follow up on implementation steps and provide more detailed breakdowns (including counts of disabled start‑stop units and the electric vehicle rollout plan) to the commission.