Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan has offered taxpayers a remarkably clear standard for judging government spending.

She went further while presenting her proposed 2026-27 budget: every dollar invested, she said, should deliver a positive return for Jacksonville residents. That is a powerful standard. So let's apply it. The first three installments of this series examined the growth of Jacksonville government, the concentration of salary dollars and the compensation paid to City Hall leadership. Part III put names, salaries, responsibilities and experience alongside one another. Part IV asks a different question. What are taxpayers actually getting for the money? Not what an office is called. Not how impressive someone's résumé is. Not how worthy an initiative sounds. What did it produce? And Jacksonville's own government provides a useful place to begin.

The Mayor's Office Has Become More Than the Mayor

The modern Mayor's Office is not simply a mayor, chief of staff and a few administrative employees.

Deegan's Office current roster includes a chief of staff and deputy chief of staff, chief administrative officer and deputy CAO, director of intergovernmental affairs, director of strategic initiatives, chief of analytics, chief health officer, executive director of health programs, director of state and federal advocacy and public-private partnerships, director of boards and commissions, director of community initiatives and other administrative personnel. There are also special advisers and a Public Affairs operation that includes communications, external events, social media, video production and audiovisual work.

The City's FY2025-26 budget describes the Executive Office's mission broadly: infrastructure, health, economic development, public safety, arts and culture, constituency and community outreach, and military and veterans issues. Those are substantial responsibilities. They also make accountability more complicated.

When Public Works resurfaces a road, taxpayers can see the road. When Parks opens a facility, people can use it. When firefighters respond to calls, the activity can be counted. When Planning processes applications, permits and reviews can be measured. But what is the comparable output of Strategic Initiatives? Community Initiatives? Analytics? Intergovernmental Affairs? Public Affairs? Those functions may produce enormous value. The question is whether the Mayor's Office systematically measures it.

From Job Titles to Deliverables

A salary tells us what government spends on a position. It doesn't tell us what taxpayers receive from it.

For an executive operation, a meaningful return-on-investment review should be able to answer some fairly basic questions:

What was the objective? What did it cost? Who was responsible? What was completed? What changed? What can be measured?

For some functions, the return could be financial: grants obtained, expenditures avoided, efficiencies created or outside investment leveraged. For others, it could be operational: processing times reduced, systems modernized, projects completed or duplicated functions eliminated. For health and social initiatives, it might be residents served, insurance coverage increased, emergency-room utilization reduced or homelessness measurably decreased.

Communications presents a different challenge. Government has a legitimate obligation to inform the public. But even there, taxpayers can reasonably ask what the operation costs, how much content it produces, whom it reaches and whether the activity is primarily delivering public information or promoting an administration. The point isn't that every government function should generate a profit.

Public-sector ROI is about measurable public value.

Jacksonville Already Has Examples of Measurable ROI

This investigation shouldn't begin with the assumption that the Deegan administration has nothing to show for its initiatives. In fact, several programs demonstrate exactly what meaningful performance reporting can look like.

Get Covered Jax

Get Covered Jax provides perhaps the clearest example. The administration launched the campaign in 2023 to help uninsured Duval County residents obtain health coverage. After its first enrollment period, the City reported 40,726 new enrollees and described that as a 34% reduction in the uninsured population.

By the end of 2025, the administration reported 184,795 Duval County residents enrolled in ACA plans, compared with 109,287 in 2023 — an increase of 75,507, or approximately 69%.

That doesn't establish that City Hall alone caused every additional enrollment; federal subsidies, marketplace conditions and partner organizations matter. But it gives taxpayers something concrete to evaluate. There was an objective. There was activity. And there was a measurable outcome.

That's what proof begins to look like.

River City Readers: Lots of Reading — But What's the Ultimate Measure?

River City Readers provides another useful example — and demonstrates why outputs and outcomes aren't necessarily the same thing. Deegan launched the initiative because fewer than half of Jacksonville third graders were reading on grade level. The program encourages children to read at least 20 minutes a day and log their activity.

The City's original dashboard reported more than 650 registered readers and an average exceeding 10 hours of reading per participant. The initiative subsequently passed 3 million logged reading minutes. That's measurable participation. But the administration itself tied River City Readers to a much bigger objective: improving literacy. That creates the next ROI question.

Did reading proficiency improve among participants? How many children participated consistently? What percentage of Jacksonville's school-age population did the program reach? What did the program cost per active reader? And can the City distinguish the initiative's effect from the work already being performed by schools, libraries, parents and nonprofit organizations? Three million minutes is an impressive output.

Improved literacy is the outcome.

A serious government performance system should distinguish between the two.

Journey Forward: When the Outcome Takes Years

Some initiatives can't fairly be judged immediately. Jacksonville Journey Forward illustrates the problem.

The City established the 11-member board to review and recommend programs dealing with crime prevention, intervention, rehabilitation, neighborhood stability and recidivism. It is also supposed to convene agencies and community organizations around a citywide strategy for reducing factors contributing to crime.

The FY2025-26 budget included $2 million for Journey Forward. A program like this can't reasonably be judged simply by asking whether crime fell six months after a board meeting.

But taxpayers can still demand benchmarks. How many programs received funding? What populations were targeted? How many people participated? What did each intervention cost? What are completion and recidivism rates? What baseline was established before spending began? What outcomes will determine whether programs are renewed?

The absence of an immediate result isn't necessarily a failure.

The absence of a mechanism for determining results is a much bigger problem.

Health Programs Give Jacksonville Something Else to Measure

The Mayor's Office health initiatives also demonstrate why the conversation needs to move beyond announcements. The FY2025-26 budget included $7.1 million for health programs, including Healthlink Jax telehealth, elder food insecurity, JaxCareConnect, pediatric mental health and 988 services, dental access, infant mortality programs and congenital syphilis screening. Another $56 million was budgeted for UF Health care for vulnerable residents.

Those programs shouldn't be lumped together and labeled either successes or failures. They should be measured individually. JaxCareConnect, for example, reported nearly 4,000 referrals in 2025 and said 76% of its patients stayed out of local emergency rooms for a full year.

That is precisely the kind of performance indicator taxpayers should be able to examine.

Now add the next questions: How much did that reduction in emergency-room utilization save? How much City money went into producing the result? How does performance compare year over year?

That converts an accomplishment into an ROI analysis.

What About the Harder-to-Measure Executive Offices?

This is where the investigation becomes more difficult — and arguably more important.

Consider the current executive functions of Strategic Initiatives, Analytics, Community Initiatives, Intergovernmental Affairs, state and federal advocacy, public-private partnerships and Public Affairs.

What constitutes success for each?

For Intergovernmental Affairs and state/federal advocacy, taxpayers might reasonably expect reporting on grants and appropriations pursued, dollars secured, legislation advanced or defeated and partnerships developed.

For Analytics, the natural measures would include systems or dashboards created, departments assisted, efficiencies identified, costs reduced, decisions changed because of the analysis and measurable improvements resulting from those decisions.

For Strategic Initiatives, the public should be able to identify the initiatives assigned to the office, their objectives, timelines, budgets, status and results.

For Community Initiatives, measures could include programs launched, residents reached, partnerships created, outside dollars leveraged and specific community outcomes.

For Public Affairs, the City itself says the office oversees communications, media relations, social media, photography, videography, mayoral correspondence and public-records functions with the objective of increasing public awareness and understanding.

Then measure it.

How much does the operation cost? How many public-information requests and communications does it handle? How quickly? What audiences are reached? How much outside advertising or production expense is avoided by maintaining an internal operation?

These aren't hostile questions.

They're management questions.

Nearly 30 Initiatives — But Where Is the Scorecard?

Our broader review of the Deegan administration has identified roughly 30 initiatives, programs, commissions, campaigns and major policy efforts associated with the administration.

That is not inherently evidence of government expansion or inefficiency.

A mayor is elected to pursue an agenda.

But the larger the agenda becomes, the greater the need for a public management system that tells taxpayers which initiatives are working.

For every significant initiative, Jacksonville should ideally be able to produce something resembling a scorecard:

And importantly, those measures should be established before success is declared.

Otherwise government risks measuring whatever looks best after the fact.

Jacksonville Is Moving Toward a Scorecard

There is an important development here.

This month, the Deegan administration launched an online tool called “Promises Made, Promises Kept, What's Next,” intended to let residents track campaign commitments, accomplishments and priorities in the proposed FY2026-27 budget.

That's a positive step toward accountability. But a list of accomplishments and a performance dashboard are not necessarily the same thing. An accountability system becomes much more useful when it lets citizens see not only what government says it accomplished, but also what the original target was, what was spent, whether deadlines were met and what measurable outcome resulted. There is a fundamental difference between:

We launched a program.

and

We spent X dollars, served Y residents, achieved Z outcome and performed above or below the target established when the program began.

The second is ROI.

And Then There Is the Mayor's $3-for-$1 Claim

Deegan has now introduced an even larger performance claim.

During her July budget presentation, she said the City's analysis of the economic value generated by municipal services found that each tax dollar provides nearly $3 in return.

That's potentially an important finding. It also deserves documentation.

What methodology produced the $3 figure? What services were included? How was economic value assigned to police protection, parks, libraries, permitting, road maintenance or public communications? Were avoided costs included? Over what period? Who conducted the analysis? Can taxpayers inspect the model?

A three-to-one return would be an impressive argument for Jacksonville government.

Showing the math would make it substantially more powerful.

Because the mayor's own standard isn't merely that government should claim a positive return.

It's that taxpayers are owed proof.

The $5 Million Question

That brings us back to the Mayor's executive operation. The relevant question isn't whether a mayor should have highly compensated advisers. Every large organization needs executive leadership. Nor does a high salary establish that someone is overpaid. A talented executive who saves taxpayers millions, secures major outside funding or successfully manages complex initiatives could conceivably be worth considerably more than his or her salary. The reverse is equally true. A title and salary do not establish value. That's why Part III's salary comparison was only the beginning.

If Jacksonville is investing roughly $5 million annually in its mayoral executive operation, taxpayers should be able to trace that investment into identifiable work products and results. What initiatives originated there? Which succeeded? Which didn't? How much outside money was leveraged? What processes improved? What costs were reduced? What measurable outcomes changed? And when an initiative fails to produce the expected return, does City Hall stop funding it, redesign it — or simply move on to the next initiative? Those are the questions a genuine ROI culture asks.

Government ROI Is Hard — But That Doesn't Make It Optional

Government isn't a corporation. A fire department can't calculate its worth solely from revenue. Neither can a library, park, planning office or homelessness program. Sometimes the return is a life saved. Sometimes it's a neighborhood protected from flooding. Sometimes it's a child who learns to read, a business that gets a permit faster, an uninsured resident who gets primary care instead of visiting an emergency room, or a federal grant that reduces the local taxpayer's burden. Those outcomes can be difficult to monetize. They are not impossible to measure. And the harder a government function is to measure, the more important it becomes to establish objectives before spending begins. Otherwise, taxpayers are left with announcements, press releases and lists of activities instead of evidence of performance.

Deegan Set the Standard. Jacksonville Should Build the System.

There is something valuable about the standard Mayor Deegan articulated. Government shouldn't receive the benefit of the doubt simply because its intentions are good. Nor should taxpayers automatically assume that every new initiative is wasteful.

Measure it.

Get Covered Jax provides enrollment numbers. River City Readers provides participation and reading minutes, while leaving the larger literacy outcome to be demonstrated. Health programs can report patients served and emergency-room utilization.

Journey Forward can establish baselines and track intervention outcomes. Strategic Initiatives can publish project scorecards. Analytics can document efficiencies and savings. Intergovernmental Affairs can quantify outside funding secured. Public Affairs can report workload, reach and service performance. And the Mayor's Office can connect those results to what taxpayers spend maintaining the executive operation. That's not partisan oversight. That's management. Jacksonville is now operating with a proposed General Fund exceeding $2.02 billion, up from approximately $1.75 billion in Deegan's first proposed budget, while the proposed FY2026-27 Capital Improvement Plan alone totals another $586.1 million.

At that scale, taxpayers shouldn't have to piece together government performance from dozens of webpages, budget books, press releases and council documents. They should be able to see the return. Mayor Deegan has already supplied the standard:

Taxpayers are owed proof.

Now Mayor Deegan's Office needs to show it.

The Mayors Office Part IX

The Mayors Office Part VIII

The Mayors Office Part VII

The Mayors Office Part VI

Donna The Mayors Office Part V

The Mayors Office Part IV

The Mayors Office Part III

The Mayors Office Part II

The Mayor's Office Part I