Capital Investment Strategy

Introduction

Boulder has a rich history of investing in the community. Prior to the 2000s, the community consistently invested significant resources in capital facilities.

Some examples include:

• buying park lands and open space
• providing and upgrading public facilities such as libraries, recreation centers and sports fields
• building places for community business and services such as the municipal campus buildings and operations centers
• building multimodal community connections such as the Greenways system, bikeways and intersection improvements.

Today

Like many cities, a decade of stagnating revenues and material cost escalation has resulted in a backlog of maintenance and capital projects for Boulder. Over the past 10 years, city expenditures on capital projects have dropped 40 percent. Costs for heavy materials (such as concrete and steel) have increased over 35 percent in the same timeframe. While some capital project work has continued through creative funding, dollars don't go as far as they used to. New community investment-type projects have been mostly limited to those that were able to secure additional funds from outside sources.

The majority of today's city revenues go towards maintaining and operating the infrastructure that already exists.

What is Boulder doing about it?

At an April 5, 2011 council meeting , the council endorsed a work program for a "Capital Investment Strategy."

The Capital Investment Strategy consists of two distinct efforts to identify funding for capital investments: Round 1 (2011) and Round 2 (2012).

I. Round 1 - Develop a bonding package for the 2011 ballot that:

• does NOT raise taxes
• funds significant deficiencies to address needed maintenance and renovation of existing facilities as well as high priority system enhancements

II. Round 2 - Investigate the possibility of a bond package for the 2012 ballot that:

• raises new revenues to invest in high priority new or expanded community facilities that make Boulder a great city
• could include ongoing operation and maintenance costs
• could include funding for significant deficiencies

Since the 2011 ballot item passed, the projects identified in the ballot bond package will be added to the city's Capital Investment Program (CIP) along with its newly identified funding. This graphic depicts a schedule for the Round 1 and Round 2 processes and how they relate to the city's CIP process.

The city's CIP process identifies timelines and priorities for the capital projects that have funding.
The Capital Investment Strategy's objective is to identify new funding for unfunded projects so they can be added to the CIP.

Last Updated on Wednesday, 27 June 2012 09:48