A2 Capital Improvement Plan

Although the Ann Arbor city website is pretty good, I'm still struggling to find information--what's planned, what's been accomplished, and what will really happen--about the evolution of the city's transportation infrastructure on the website. Today I came across the Proposed FY2010-2015 Capital Improvements Plan page, which appears to contain much of the information I was looking for. Apparently, the A2 City Charter requires a six-year-plan every year, the first two years of which form the basis of the two-year Capitol Improvement Budget. (From this, one might conclude that Years 3-6 are simply wishful thinking unless they actually migrate into Year 1-2 in a future year.)

The 3 links of interest:

# 2010-2015 CIP Presentation (3.2 MB pdf)
# Planning Commission staff report (pdf) - December 16, 2008
# Capital Improvements Programming (pdf) - December 5, 2008

The first one is apparently the public presentation given on December 16, 2008 at a public hearing held by the Planning Commission. It seems pretty bereft of content, other than repeated statements that the process has been improved (which might well be very true, as this is the first I've ever heard about this process) by using interdisciplinary teams and focusing on "corridors" with overlapping projects that can be done in sync. (Presuming this reduces hassle for local residents, improves efficiency, and reduces cost, although I'm speculating.) In my opinion, the most interesting slides is #24, which clearly illuminates that most of the non-motorized transit plans are unfunded. This is explained in slide 27 as follows:

Previous plan had removed most items because of inability/unlikelihood of
implementation
• This year all needs identified --funded and unfunded -- so many non-motorized and alternative transportation projects added

In my experience with budgeting processes, this is a significant step forward as oftentimes good ideas are buried by middle managers who don't even get the good ideas on the table because they assume they won't be funded. In other words, by calling out the ideas, even if unfunded, they become part of the debate. This seems to have been the intent, as the second document says the following, on page 4 of the PDF:

During the work on the FY2008-2013 CIP, the approach taken was to include only “implementable” projects. As a result, most of the non-motorized needs were not
included in the plan due to the lack of available funding and the uncertainty of support at the time of implementation. This year, the approach to the CIP was to charge the CIP Category to identify all of the needs in the various asset areas - - regardless of funding or outside support.

Therefore, there are many needs that are included in the CIP that are not funded at this time including a great number of non-motorized projects. However, the presence of these unfunded or unprogrammed needs are intended to draw the attention of the
broader city staff, policy makers and the public on the increasing number and scope of
needs of the city related to its infrastructure systems; and to perhaps serve as the
catalyst for discussions and efforts to find methods to fund and program these needs.

So, it seems like the city staff that put the document together are saying "Here are some worthwhile projects that ought to get funded which we can't afford; please have elected representatives and members of the citizenry discuss creative ways to get these funded." The document doesn't seem to be saying "Perhaps we should build more bike lanes before we build any new streets; please discuss."

The first question that comes to mind is "Why are non-motorized projects largely unfunded while other projects are fully funded?" Returning to the first PDF, it looks like the Sanitary System, Stormwater Management, Water System, Airport, Parking Facilities, Street Construction, City Owned Buildings, and Solid Waste are fully funded, while Alternative Transportation, New Streets, Other Transportation, Parks & Recreation are not. (These are not defined in this document, so one is left to wonder about the difference between Alternative Transportation vs. Other Transportation.) Is the reason some are funded and some are not tradition (i.e. the city has always done sewers but bike lanes are relatively new)? Prioritization (i.e. sewers are more important than bike lanes)? Legal (i.e. we're required to fully fund these things by the state)

Reading through the third document, it appears that it's not "legal", as defined above. I infer this from page 4 of the PDF, which quotes the Municipal Planning Act (Section 125.3865, Act 33 of the Public Acts of 2008) as saying: "The capital improvements program shall show those public structures and improvements, in the general order of their priority, that in the commission's judgment will be needed or desirable and can be undertaken within the ensuing 6-year period."

That leaves either tradition or prioritization, presumably both of which should be considered critically by the citizenry.

The second question that comes to mind is "So what are the unfunded projects and where can the public have input about creative funding for these projects?"

More on that in the next post.