JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Jacksonville City Council’s Special Committee on Duval DOGE held the first of its six scheduled meetings on Tuesday afternoon, and a $90 million question quickly became the focal point.
City leaders said that’s the amount of money that could potentially be reallocated and used in different ways and, according to the auditor’s report, would come from over 60 Capital Improvement Projects that are marked as having “no expenditures since October 2023.”
Those projects include sidewalks, Riverwalk repairs, murals, road improvements, and more.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Councilman Salem said now is the time to find out what’s going on with those projects and find out if that money is still needed.
And if not, it could go somewhere else.
“We should get updates on all those 67 projects and know what the statuses of those are and whether those dollars can be reallocated,” Salem said. “Is that money still needed? Is there some reason it has not been spent yet? Okay, those are the questions we need to get answered. I’m not suggesting all 90 million is our dollars that we can reallocate, but I if we got 10% of that, that’s nine to 10 million.”
The committee also looked at departments’ growth and made comparisons from this 2024-2025 fiscal year compared to 2017-2018.
For example, in 2017-2018, the Inspector General’s Office had a $999,610 budge. For this fiscal year, it’s over $1.6 million, a growth of over $600,000.
Last week, Mayor Deegan answered our questions about the special committee and the trimming it may seek to do.
“I want to make sure we’re being intentional if we’re going to cut the budget. What we don’t want to do is harm services for our citizens, and we have taken such great care since we’ve been in this office,” she said.
Councilman Salem responded, saying, “I said from the very beginning, this would be surgical. We’re not looking to whack departments or anything close to that. We’re looking at savings such as the CIP (Capital Improvement Plan), very surgical where dollars appear to be sitting there and can be used in other places.”
Salem was also asked why there were no Democrats on the special committee.
“I formed a committee that I thought would be productive in looking at this process,” Salem said. “If you were here for the last two and you saw the Democrat [who] was in the room, that I thought acted very inappropriately, that’s one of the reasons we don’t have a Democrat on the committee.”
Jimmy Peluso told News4JAX that he believed Salem was referencing him and provided a response.
“If there’s one person who was acting inappropriately, it’s the council member who is leading this blind committee,” Peluso said. “He needs to remember he is not the mayor and let’s hope he never will be.”
Nationally and statewide, DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) has drawn lots of attention with efforts championed by Elon Musk and Gov. Ron DeSantis to eliminate “unnecessary” spending to ensure government efficiency.
According to City Council President Randy White’s charge, the committee is made up of Republicans and no Democrats. They are council members Ron Salem, Joe Carlucci, Raul Arias, Chris Miller, and Mike Gay.
The committee’s final report is due by June 23.
Councilman Salem’s full after-meeting interview can be watched below.
