After four months of scrutinizing Fort Lauderdale’s budget, the Florida Department of Government Efficiency has come back with a few suggestions, including this one: The city could save more than $10 million by reviewing staffing levels and eliminating positions.

“Our team examined the city of Fort Lauderdale’s personnel system and contracts, and we estimate there are opportunities for between $6 million and $11 million in potential personnel savings, and millions more in better contracting and software licensing practices,” Eric Soskin, senior adviser to Gov. Ron DeSantis and DOGE Team Lead, wrote in an Oct. 16 letter sent to Mayor Dean Trantalis and Interim City Manager Chris Cooper.

Fort Lauderdale found itself under the scrutiny of the Florida DOGE team in June, when the agency sent a demand letter to City Hall requesting a mountain of documents dating from 2024 to 2026.

“We know you share Governor DeSantis’ commitment to helping keep Florida affordable for its citizens through responsible public spending and the efficient, cost-effective delivery of public services,” Soskin wrote in the letter.

Commissioner Steve Glassman said the letter arrived this week.

“I think overall it was positive,” Glassman said. “If a budget is over $1 billion all in, it’s not that bad to say we could save $10 million. I don’t think we’re way out of line when you compare us to other cities over our size. But we’ll take a look at it.”

The upcoming Nov. 3 vote on property tax cuts has pushed Florida cities’ spending further into the spotlight.

On Wednesday, the mayor dismissed the more critical parts of the letter that list ways the city can save money.

“I don’t know that anybody could really be in a position to micromanage the management of our departments,” Trantalis said. “They’d have to do a deeper dive to determine if those positions are redundancies. At the end of the day, we are short-staffed in many ways. I’m not focused on that part.”

Trantalis said he preferred to focus on the positive remarks the state had about how the city managed to shave millions off the cost of the proposed new City Hall.

In that regard, the state gave Fort Lauderdale a pat on the back for being good stewards of taxpayer dollars, the mayor said.

The city has not yet had a chance to respond to the state’s report.

“We will gather the facts and come up with a response — one that I think will satisfy the state,” Trantalis said. “I believe we are working in lockstep with the expectations the state has for various municipalities.”

The state’s DOGE team took a hard look at the city’s civilian staffing levels, which account for $160.9 million in annual base payroll.

“Fort Lauderdale’s civilian staffing levels substantially exceed most peers identified by FL DOGE, both within Florida and nationwide,” the state’s summary report said. “This includes high levels of staffing for financial administration, general administration, and parks and recreation.”

The DOGE team recommended a number of high-earning positions, some vacant at the time of this review, be eliminated.

Among them:

— A Division Manager with Information Technology Services with an annual expense of $157,000 to $199,000.

— A Senior Commission Assistant with an annual expense of $123,000 to $198,000.

— A Division Manager in Public Works with an annual expense of $172,000 to $185,000.

—  Assistant City Auditor II with an annual expense of $134,000 to $185,000.

—  A Community Redevelopment Agency Manager with an annual expense of $130,000 to $175,000.

—  A Division Manager in the City Manager’s office with an annual expense of $112,000 to $171,000.

—  Financial Administrator in Transportation & Mobility with an annual expense of $90,000 to $135,000.

— A Chief Education Officer in the City Manager’s office with an annual expense of $112,000 to $171,000.

“The last of these, the Chief Education Officer, illustrates the problem of excessive executive and managerial positions,” the report said. “This ‘chief’ role does not oversee any other staff, is principally responsible for coordinating with external educational institutions, and a recent job posting for the position emphasized that it ‘lead[s] initiatives to enhance public perception’ of education quality: essentially, a strategic communications role classified as Management Category II.”

The report recommended Fort Lauderdale eliminate vacant civilian positions that account for more than $35 million in the city’s annual budget.

“The citywide vacancy rate is 16.0% overall, with 172 civilian positions that have been vacant more than twelve months,” the report said. “A typical benchmark for elimination of long-term local government vacancies is that 60% of local government vacancies that persist for 12 months or longer can be targeted for elimination. The long-term vacancies carry $9.7M in associated salaries, so Fort Lauderdale could expect to save $4.9M in salaries alone by reviewing these vacant positions.”

The DOGE team took issue with the number of majors at the Fort Lauderdale Police Department.

“FL DOGE also observed that the Police Department currently has four positions at the level of major with collective direct supervisory responsibility over just 13 subordinates,” the report said. “The department should assess whether the senior ranks of the department can be flattened.”

In addition, the DOGE review identified approximately 60 supervisors who oversee just one employee.

The report suggests the city review those positions and reclassify them in a specialist role or look to eliminate them through attrition.

The DOGE team recommended the city review opportunities to consolidate services duplicated across multiple departments.

“There are other functions in Fort Lauderdale that should be reviewed for potential consolidation as well as duplication with contract functions, including call center/customer service and administrative support roles,” the report said.

Fort Lauderdale won rare praise from the DOGE team for aggressively restructuring its interim agreement with FTL City Hall Partners for a new City Hall.

That strategy lowered the project cost from $267.7 million to $217.05 million, eliminating a $12 million developer fee and 10% developer equity participation, and reducing the annual obligation from $24.16 million to $15.8 million, the report said.

In the end, the city reduced the cost by more than $250 million over 30 years, the report noted.

Said the report: “If a new City Hall project can be completed on these revised terms, this represents a substantive procurement win for Fort Lauderdale taxpayers relative to the baseline of the April 2026 proposal.”

During a meeting on Tuesday, Cooper told the commission he plans to address the DOGE letter at a later date.

The commission is expecting to hire a permanent city manager after voters choose a successor to Commissioner John Herbst in the Nov. 3 election.

“The former city manager hired a lot of the new personnel,” Glassman said. “It will be up to the new city manager to take a look at the changes that were made.”

Correction: An earlier version of the story incorrectly described the range of costs for city jobs the state DOGE team said could be eliminated. DOGE listed the annual expense for each job.

Susannah Bryan can be reached at sbryan@sunsentinel.com. Follow me on X @Susannah_Bryan