Capital improvements program clarified

In the past month or two, the subject of city spending has become very popular with the citizens of Whitefish. It appears that interest in this topic was generated after the adoption of the Capital Improvement Program at the May 21 council meeting.

The CIP document submitted to city council was titled "Capital Improvements Project 2007/2008 - 2011/2012." The information in the CIP document called for $73.2 million in capital improvements.

A couple of significant changes happened this year in regards to the CIP. The CIP was originally developed by the city's consultant in 2003 and has been updated in-house each year for the past five years.

Up to this year, the CIP had not been officially adopted by city council and had been used by administration to support financial planning for the budget process. Administration considered the CIP as a work in progress which was updated every year. Some of the projects came to fruition while others were pushed back or eliminated as circumstances dictated.

This year, changes were made which were driven by the legal requirements for implementing impact fees. One of the changes was having the city council formally adopt the CIP. Another change was driven by the requirement of including projects out in the future up to 25 years if the city elected to recover growth's portion of capital improvement costs through impact fees.

I have since recognized that the CIP document, along with the presentation to the city council on May 21, has led to some misunderstanding about the CIP. Looking back it would have been appropriate to title the CIP document as "Capital Improvements Project 2007/2008 - 2011/2012 and Long-term Public Works Projects 2012/2013 - 2026/2027."

To put this all into perspective, the CIP financial planning document called for $44.6 million in capital improvements over the next five years and $28.6 million in public works capital improvements beyond the five years, for a 20-year period.

CIP projects for the next five years average out to about $8.9 million per year, which approximates the city's level of funding for capital projects over the past several years. Therefore, the five-year plan does not represent much change in spending levels from the recent past. Beyond the five years, the CIP plan calls for public works projects of $28.6 over a 20-year period.

The city's consultant, along with city staff, is in the process of updating the CIP to provide additional clarification and to interject changes driven by the impact fee ordinance. Staff intends to bring this to the city council at the Sept. 4 council meeting.

As city finance director, I will continue to assist in developing and updating proposed financial planning documents, such as the CIP, to help support the city's financial challenges of keeping up with essential community services and infrastructure in an atmosphere of high growth and citizen sensitivity to property taxes and fees.

Mike Eve is the Whitefish finance director and assistant city manager.