DOGE: City could save millions
DOGE October 16 Letter to Cape Coral (2)
An analysis from the Florida Department of Government Efficiency shows Cape Coral is lean in terms of staffing as compared to other government entities but it can still save up to $6.5 million.
City Manager Michael Ilczyszyn told city council Wednesday that the city received one of the most favorable DOGE reviews, adding that when analyzed on per capita, Cape Coral comes in as “lean.”
“They did not find any misappropriation, illegal and wasteful funding,” he said at this week’s city council meeting, adding that DOGE provided a short list of items to look into and explore.
Ilczyszyn said there is support in how the city is operated and run.
“Our team examined the City of Cape Coral’s personnel system and contracts, and we estimate there are opportunities for between $3.8 million and $6.5 million in potential savings opportunities in personnel costs and additional opportunities for savings in procurement/contracting activities,” DOGE Team Lead Senior Advisor to the Governor Eric Soskin wrote in an Oct. 16 letter to the city.
The letter states that Florida DOGE reviewed 1,554 budgeted civilian positions, 1,430 of which were reflected as filled. Those positions accounted for approximately $99.1 million in annual base payroll across 16 departments and include 174 managers spread over as many as nine organizational layers. There are also 650 sworn law enforcement and first responders.
“Relative to its population, Cape Coral’s overall level of municipal staffing is lean — below the median of our dataset in FTEs per 1,000 residents across many functions. Still, Cape Coral’s organization is deeper than necessary for its size in some places, with pockets of zero-span or single-span supervisors, as many as 20. The City should be able to flatten layers and implement increased spans of controls for some managers without cutting operational capacity, and likely, improving speed and resilience. Other managerial roles may be better suited to reclassification as a lead or senior specialist in an office operating as a small team,” the report stated.
Florida DOGE also highlighted law enforcement personnel, stating the Cape Coral Police Department is authorized for 487 positions, but is carrying 84 vacancies, roughly $7 million in budgeted, but unfilled positions.
“The City should pay attention to whether these vacancies are the product of broader law-enforcement recruitment challenges or reflect factors specific to Cape Coral, and should assure that budgeted law-enforcement spend becomes available for future law-enforcement needs rather than being subject to low-value end of year spending (either within the police department or elsewhere),” the report states.
Opportunities for audits or further review of city processes listed include change orders; capital improvement bidding; 34 procurement awards; purchases of Grammarly, perplexity, GoDaddy, and OpenAI software; license review for blank-license rows; and payment-to-purchase order matching.
IIczyszyn said they had a meeting to clarify a couple of things that were categorized as change orders or non-competitive solicitation of award of contract. He said the way the city reports the information in its system led to those conducting the analysis thinking some things were not competitively solicited.
The list are items city staff is already looking into, IIczyszyn said.