Mitch Needelman for Brevard County Clerk of the Circuit Court

For Immediate Release
Contact: Mitch Needelman
(321) 243-7752 (OR) mitchneedelman@earthlink.net
STORY LINK: Florida Today: http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20110203/NEWS01/102030310/-1/SEVENDAYS

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Needelman Reorganizes Clerk’s Office

February 2, 2011 – Tittusville – In what recently sworn in Clerk of the Circuit and County Courts said was the third phase of a five phase re-organization of his office, Mitch Needelman announced he was consolidating 8 departments, reclassifying 33 positions and eliminating 17.

Needelman officially began his tenure as the Clerk on January 1, and facing more than $2 million in budget short falls, said he knew that a new approach was needed to achieve the constitutional and statutory mandates of his office.

“With our new management team in place, we requested that the clerk’s office leadership give us a fair and honest assessment of each of the departments,” Needelman said. “What they brought to us was a baseline for necessary changes.”

“We found we could eliminate the duplication of services found in some departments, and we found that many positions were either redundant or simply unneeded to perform our mission,” Needelman said. “If we’re going to move forward, this consolidation was the best way to begin.”

According to the Clerk’s internal audit, the reorganization will save more than $1 million annually and will yield instant savings of more than a third of that in the next quarter.

“We were seeing a wound that was bleeding out, and we needed to take immediate action to stop it,” Needelman said. “By eliminating duplicated and unneeded positions and combining like and complimentary functions into single departments we can stabilize the situation.”

Additionally Needelman credited his leadership team for acting quickly to asses and address issues effectively.
“I brought in people with a track record in business to give the office a fresh perspective based on a private sector service model,” Needelman said. “That new way of looking at government has provided this opportunity to save a million dollars a year, and we are only in the 3rd phase of our 5 phase plan.”

Needelman a former Florida House member said it was never an easy thing to cut from the budget, and to make these kinds of sweeping changes, but that they were necessary and would be best for the clerk’s real customers—the tax payers.