Palm Bay Sets Sights on $15 Million Budget Cut, DOGE Drives FY27 Workshop

Palm Bay, FL – Palm Bay’s fiscal year 2027 budget cycle opened Wednesday night with a single number on the board: $15 million. That is the size of the cut Deputy City Manager Brian Robinson told the City Council the administration is now targeting, walking back from an initial blanket “20% across the board” reduction order that, by his own accounting, would have produced only about $3 million in savings.

The 45-minute workshop at City Hall ran short on revenue figures and long on framing. City Manager Matthew Morton was absent. Deputy Mayor Mike Jaffe was absent. Mayor Rob Medina presided. Councilman Kenny Johnson carried the questioning. Councilman Mike Hammer and Councilman Chandler Langevin both passed.

The Finance Department booked the meeting as a high-level walkthrough of 353 department requests totaling $287 million across all funds. The headline policy framework: a local “DOGE” initiative branded after the federal Department of Government Efficiency but executed under Florida’s own DOGE framework for local governments, with the city manager’s office now committed to finding roughly $15 million to subtract from next year’s budget.

The DOGE Directive: From 20% to $15 Million

Deputy City Manager Jason DeLorenzo opened with the framing. “As part of the city’s DOGE effort, we asked each department to provide our office with a 20% operational cut that did not impact on core service delivery.” Each department, he said, was asked to bring back reductions aligned with council priorities, citizen expectations, and contractual obligations.

DeLorenzo cited “the Florida Manual,” his shorthand for the Florida Association of Counties’ How to DOGE Yourself: The Florida DOGE Guide for Local Jurisdictions, an August 2025 publication produced in cooperation with the Governor’s Executive Office DOGE Team. DeLorenzo said the framework defines DOGE in three parts: fiscal discipline and review, transparency and accountability, and service delivery. “In other words, right-size the budget by setting a baseline level of service, ensuring tax dollars are spent wisely and can be tracked, and providing exceptional customer service by eliminating red tape and optimizing workflows.”

The first week of June, DeLorenzo said, the city manager’s office will sit down with each department to drill down on their proposed cuts against council priorities, KPIs, and community expectations.

Johnson pressed the point in the question round. He asked Robinson whether the 20% would be uniform across departments. Robinson said no. “It may not apply 20% across the board for every department because we have to go back through those numbers and look through operationally how does that meet the needs of the things that are maybe mandated.” Johnson tested the logic: “Potentially it could be 22% reduction with parks and facilities, but 18% with police.” Robinson confirmed it would fluctuate, but the citywide average is the target.

Then came the bigger revelation in Robinson’s closing remarks. The 20% cut, applied across the board, was producing only about $3 million in savings. “It’s not a significant number as we look across the board. So we needed more than that. So we’ve pivoted from just a single number, just 20%, to a much higher number, setting a much higher goal for ourselves.” The new target: $15 million, possibly between $13 and $15 million.

That is a meaningful gap. A flat 20% directive netting $3 million implies the original 20% was being applied only to a narrow operational base. Stretching to $15 million means staff is now reviewing “every single piece of operation, how we do everything, all of our deliveries, all projects that are in play, things that [were] budgeted, haven’t been done.”

BCRA Sunset and the $2.5 Million Road Backfill

Johnson’s questions also surfaced one of the bigger structural changes coming into FY27. The Bayfront Community Redevelopment Agency, Palm Bay’s CRA tied to road maintenance funding, has sunsetted. The funding stream Johnson described as “the funding mechanism with the BCRA,” previously transferred to road maintenance, is now gone.

Finance Director Larry Wojciechowski answered. “The BCRA money is, of course, it has sunsetted. There is still some money set aside from BCRA because there’s a lawsuit that’s currently with the city. Once that’s resolved, if there’s any residual money left, of course, that will go back to either the city or to the county, depending on the percentages.”

The replacement plan: “We also have a plan to be setting aside the $2.5 million annually of general fund money, to make up the difference of the BCRA money. That has not been discussed yet, but that will be done during our conversation in June with the city manager.”

Translate that for residents. The CRA that funded road work is closed. A residual pot is held back pending a lawsuit. Going forward, the general fund picks up the $2.5 million annual gap. That money has to come from somewhere inside the same general fund the city is now trying to cut by $15 million. The math gets tight.

Johnson framed the urgency directly. “These roads are getting wear and tear. We got more vehicles on these roads, so they’re going to wear and tear faster.”

Public Safety: $7.2 Million Ask, Pension Liability Climbing Fast

Budget Program Administrator Jessica Henchman walked the council through obligations first. Bargaining unit increases are baked in: Fire at 8%, FOP officers at roughly 7% with a merit step, Sergeants and Lieutenants at about 4%, NAGE Blue and NAGE White at approximately 5% each with merit steps. General employees are proposed at 5% to keep pace with city-wide contracts. Fire will also add the new rank of Fire Captain in the coming year, which carries a separate set-aside that has not been finalized.

The bigger structural number is pensions. The FY27 pension increase is $4.3 million, about a 39% jump. Henchman traced it to the staffing decisions of three years ago.

“The big jump we’re seeing is from the increase in FTEs that we had in FY24. We added approximately 35 positions between police and fire that directly impact pension.” The actuarial reports lag, so the city is just now seeing the impact of three years of contract raises plus the FTE additions. Over the last five years, police pension liability has roughly tripled. Fire pension liability has increased by about one and a half, Henchman said.

For scale, Henchman walked through what a single high-step officer costs in pension exposure. A police lieutenant at the top step earns $165,000 in salary, and the actuarial report sets pension at about 41% of salary for police, meaning roughly $47,000 in pension cost on that one position. A fire lieutenant at the top step earns about $113,960, with pension at 46% of salary for fire, meaning about $52,400 in pension cost.

Add the new debt service for the LIFEPAK 35 cardiac monitor purchase for Fire, about $156,000 annually, and the FY27 obligations slide totals just under $6.9 million before any operational requests.

On the operational side, Fire and Police combined submitted $7.2 million in general fund requests. That figure excludes any new station funding, because Police is still completing a staffing study and Fire is using impact fees for design work on upcoming stations. Henchman flagged Fire’s annual operating budget as already underfunded. “Their annual operating needs currently exceed the budget that they have on an operating basis, especially with all of these new stations coming online.” Leadership development was cut from the current annual budget, and Fire is now asking to add it back.

Police submitted $3.5 million in project requests covering improvements to the police range, the donated Kroger building, the Frank Tobar building, and a storage facility. Police capital projects this year make up 71% of the department’s general fund ask. The Police Headquarters request is not in this cycle. That waits on the staffing study.

Infrastructure: Parks and Facilities Submits $13.85 Million

Henchman used a treadmill metaphor for the city’s infrastructure load. “The treadmill is at the highest steepest incline. The needs outweigh what we have to achieve to get those done.”

Parks and Facilities submitted $13.85 million in requests, including 13 vehicle replacements totaling $683,000 routed through Fleet. The bulk of the department’s ask covers facility needs across other city departments, including six requests tied to fire station updates ranging from AC repairs to bay door fixes flagged as safety items.

Public Works and Fleet collectively submitted $27.27 million across 49 requests. The biggest single line is fleet itself: 92 vehicle replacements and new vehicles city-wide for $15 million. Fire apparatus accounted for five vehicles at over $8 million.

Public Works has been the workhorse department in Henchman’s accounting. “They have traffic ops which is only a three or four person team handling everything for the citywide. They have their ROW beautification, surveying and also infrastructure.” Both Public Works and Parks and Facilities run citywide internal service operations on annual budgets of $6.4 million each. Cuts to either department’s operating budget cascade into every other department.

Stormwater requested $6.5 million across 15 capital project requests, almost entirely focused on increasing service capacity. Utilities, as an enterprise fund supported by ratepayer fees, is separate from the general fund discussion entirely. Utilities did submit a $62 million bond request for the South Regional Water Reclamation Facility expansion and a separate bond request for the North Regional Reverse Osmosis Plant rehabilitation.

Impact fees, which are adopted on their own schedule outside the annual budget, total roughly $27.5 million across transportation, parks and recreation, and fire. Transportation impact fees alone are about $15 million, split across the three Palm Bay zip codes.

The all-funds total for FY27 requests, by Capital Asset Program Administrator Sean Spillers and Budget Analyst Shane Byrd’s running tally: 353 requests totaling $287 million.

SAB Chair Doug Hook Asks the Council for $500 a Month

The only public commenter was Doug Hook, chair of the Palm Bay Sustainability Advisory Board. Hook used his time at the podium to repeat a request he said he has made at past meetings.

“The Sustainability Advisory Board would like to become action-oriented. To do that we do require some funding.” Hook said the board has been able to source donations through community partners but has no city-side mechanism to receive or hold those funds. His ask was modest. “Something along the lines of $500 a month would allow us to budget and plan for long-term stuff.”

Hook offered the math. “If we have a $4,000 project, that would be eight months of planning. It would allow us to work within a budget time frame.” Plants cost money. Mulch costs money. The board does volunteer labor and brings outside partners, but materials are not free.

As an alternative, Hook revived a suggestion from Councilman Hammer: establish a donation channel through the city, modeled on Parks and Recreation’s existing donation pipeline. “If there was a way that we could solicit from the Sustainability Advisory Board donations to any projects that we have, and those funds would be able to go through the city, that would be fantastic.”

Neither option made it onto staff’s list during the workshop. Whether either makes the proposed budget in July is now a question for the city manager’s office.

What Council Did Not Ask

When Medina called on Langevin and Hammer for questions, both passed. Langevin: “I’m good tonight, Mayor. Thank you.” Hammer: “I’m also good with what I’ve read. I know our next meetings, when the actual numbers are going to be released, that’s when I’m going to have more questions.”

Johnson carried the questioning with three questions and a travel comment, then returned after Robinson’s closing remarks to press one more. He flagged a recurring concern that mid-year travel requests routinely exceed the council-approved budget. “Each month we’ll constantly have more requests, more requests, more requests. I would like for us to just stick with, hey, most of these events are annual, so we know they’re coming. Let’s stick with what’s already been established.”

He asked how department request numbers are generated. Henchman answered that all requests now run through an internal service review, with IT and procurement reviewing every request before it reaches the proposed budget. Procurement has been holding post-budget one-on-one meetings with each department, started by George Barber, to plan RFPs early and vet contracts before the first October meeting.

Johnson followed up by asking the city to transition more capital projects to design-build, citing past change-order problems. Medina endorsed the shift and confirmed the procurement process is being reworked under Morton’s direction.

The community investment fund, Johnson’s other question, drew an answer from Spillers: the fund is generally used to pair city money with external grant matches into a single line item.

What did not surface in council questioning: the $15 million target itself, which only emerged in Robinson’s closing remarks; the $2.5 million general fund commitment to backfill the BCRA road maintenance gap; the $4.3 million pension jump and the FTE-driven actuarial lag; the new processes for setting “no” or “not now” on items that would historically have gone straight to council.

Robinson telegraphed that last shift directly. “There are several things that may have just gone to City Council. We’re actually looking at everything before it comes to City Council for approval. Some things we were saying no to, or some things we were saying not now. So we’ve completely revamped that process as well.”

The questions councilmembers did not ask Wednesday will still need answers. The budget calendar does not wait for them.

Next Steps

The first week of June, the city manager’s office begins one-on-one meetings with each department to work through cuts and priorities. The next budget workshop is set for July 7, when staff has committed to bringing a proposed budget with actual revenue projections. Two public hearings are locked: Wednesday, September 9 and Wednesday, September 23.

Between now and July 7, three numbers are worth tracking. First, whether the $15 million reduction target holds when staff sees actual revenue projections. Second, whether the $2.5 million BCRA backfill survives the cut-priority review or gets deferred. Third, whether the Sustainability Advisory Board’s $500-a-month ask, or the proposed donation channel, makes the proposed budget.

The general fund is being squeezed from two sides. Pension and contractual obligations are climbing. Road maintenance is now leaning on the same general fund the city is trying to cut. The math will get more pointed in July when revenue numbers replace placeholders.