Jacksonville committee vets Florida Doge report, verifies many figures and orders follow-ups

The Duval Doge committee of the Jacksonville City Council on Monday reviewed a Florida Doge report that flagged millions in alleged overspending across city operations, verified several of the report’s numerical claims and directed staff to gather more detailed documentation on several items.

Kim Taylor, the council auditor, told the committee auditors extracted every Jacksonville-specific reference from the Florida Doge report and cross-checked them against city records. Taylor said the report’s headline figures — including a 36 percent increase from 2021 and a 67 percent increase from 2017 in the metric the report used for the 10 largest Florida cities — are accurate for the data and definitions Florida Doge applied, but that local accounting choices change the picture. "For the most part, anywhere where there was numbers that we could verify and look at, we've pulled, tried to pull anything in that mentioned the City of Jacksonville," Taylor said.

Why it matters: council members said the report gives a useful starting point for oversight but must be followed by itemized detail. Members repeatedly stressed the difference between apparent waste and planned or contingent future costs and urged staff to provide apples-to-apples comparisons before recommending policy changes.

Key verified items and points of contention - Personnel costs: Taylor said auditors could reproduce a substantial increase in personnel spending over recent years, with several scenarios showing increases of roughly 30–40 percent depending on whether pension reforms and collective-bargaining contingencies (a $52,000,000 timing item) are included. "Personnel costs have certainly increased within the city within that time period," Taylor said. - Grant awards and CSG/PSG process: Taylor confirmed that City Council appropriates a lump-sum for cultural and public-service grants and that the Cultural Services Grant (CSG) and Public Service Grant (PSG) councils determine awards. Specific awards cited in the report were verified, including a $480,356 award to Cathedral Arts Project (noted as covering salaries and some rent) and other grants in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Taylor repeated that the council does not directly allocate the awards after the lump sum is appropriated. - Sidewalk and CIP accounting: Florida Doge compared unit costs and cited $2–3 million per mile for some Jacksonville sidewalk projects versus an FDOT average of $900,000. Auditors located an Art Museum Drive project listed at $7.5 million that includes slope-wall and overpass modifications, explaining why scope differences produce higher costs. Public Works cited CIP unit estimates for simple one-side sidewalks (~$212,000 per mile) versus projects that require curbing/drainage (~$640,000). Councilmembers urged clearer CIP titles and scope separation. - EV fleet conversion: Taylor reported Florida Doge cited a JEA plan estimating $105,000,000 to convert 100 percent of the city's non-emergency road vehicles (about 744 vehicles) to electric vehicles over 15 years, but said the city is not obligated to adopt the plan and that the administration had only entered a no-cost, no-obligation study arrangement prior to 2024. Members asked staff to provide detailed cost comparisons and any payments to vendors. - Overtime: Auditors verified the report’s overtime-hour findings: 27 Parks & Rec staff with ~650+ overtime hours, eight Traffic Engineering staff with ~700+ hours, and four parking staff over 500 hours; Taylor said the associated cost was well over $1,000,000 and roughly half of that was flagged in the report as excessive. Administration cited special events, vacancies and turnover as drivers; members flagged safety and fiscal concerns and recommended systemic fixes such as staffing or outsourcing and stronger supervisory approval of overtime. - Procurement example: Auditors found the JIA hologram purchase advertised at $30,000 had invoices approaching $66,000; Technology Solutions paid the invoice, Taylor said, and staff followed up with the vendor for details.

What the committee directed next Council members thanked the auditors and the outside Florida Doge reviewers and asked for multiple follow-ups: a detailed itemization from Florida Doge showing how its $199 million (report total) calculation was composed, administration responses and invoices for the EV plan and any outside-vendor payments, clearer CIP project descriptions for sidewalk and bike-lane projects, and inspector-general involvement where warranted. Chair and members also scheduled a follow-up committee hearing focused substantially on health-care spending and said they would bring JTA and other stakeholders back for additional scrutiny.

Quotes from the meeting "We just pulled the language exactly from the report," Kim Taylor said, describing auditors’ effort to reproduce city-specific figures. Councilmember Arias said he views the EV conversion as a potential long-term savings and asked staff to provide projected savings and an apples-to-apples analysis. Councilmember Miller urged that organizations receiving grant funds be invited to explain expenditures and recommended inspector-general involvement.

Next steps The committee closed by thanking staff and announcing follow-up items and a next meeting focusing on the city’s health-care initiative. The committee did not take formal votes during this session.