City Council set to review capital-improvement plan

Published 8:21 pm Wednesday, February 21, 2018

: DISCUSSION: City Council members Richard Brooks (left) and Roland Wyman confer during a council meeting earlier this year. The city’s capital-improvements plan includes $55,000 in the upcoming budget to obtain equipment needed to show City Council meetings live on City 9, the city’s public-education-government channel on the local Suddenlink cable television system.

Washington’s City Council, during its meeting Monday, is scheduled to begins its review of the proposed capital-improvements plan as part of its annual city budget preparations.

The CIP, a look at the city’s major equipment and building needs over the next five fiscal years, allows the council to know what those major expenditures are and when they are scheduled to occur. Some purchases occur in one year, while others take place over several years. The council has the final say on implementing the CIP.

CIP projects range from buying new police vehicles to improving power distribution lines to software upgrades for city departments.

For fiscal year 2018-2019, which begins July 1, the CIP includes nearly $17 million for stormwater improvements, mostly in the Brown Street area and the upstream section of Jack’s Creek. The CIP also includes $150,000 for a splash park at the Hildred T. Moore Aquatic and Fitness Center at the Susiegray Moore McConnell Sports Complex. It also includes just under $500,000 to replace wooden slats on the boardwalk with marine (concrete) slats.

The CIP includes a proposed $55,000 in the 2018-2019 fiscal year for equipment that would allow City Council and other meetings to be shown live on the city’s public-education-government channel (City 9) and streamed live on the city’s website.

Also included in the CIP for fiscal year 2018-2019 is $150,000 to begin a 20-year street resurfacing plan that would use money from the city’s general fund and Powell Bill funds to resurface streets. Powell Bill funds are an annual allocation the city gets from the state’s fuel tax.

The city has adopted a pay-as-you-go plan when it comes to major capital expenditures, proceeding with CIP projects when the money is there, sometimes splitting a project into phases funded over several years. The council assigns priorities to CIP projects to determine when they will be funded, or if they are funded.

Capital expenditures of $20,000 or more must be included in the CIP before funding is allocated in budget, according to city policy. In case of emergencies, sometimes that policy is waived.

About Mike Voss

Mike Voss is the contributing editor at the Washington Daily News. He has a daughter and four grandchildren. Except for nearly six years he worked at the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va., in the early to mid-1990s, he has been at the Daily News since April 1986.
Journalism awards:
• Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service, 1990.
• Society of Professional Journalists: Sigma Delta Chi Award, Bronze Medallion.
• Associated Press Managing Editors’ Public Service Award.
• Investigative Reporters & Editors’ Award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Public Service Award, 1989.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Investigative Reporting, 1990.
All those were for the articles he and Betty Gray wrote about the city’s contaminated water system in 1989-1990.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Investigative Reporting, 1991.
• North Carolina Press Association, Third Place, General News Reporting, 2005.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Lighter Columns, 2006.
Recently learned he will receive another award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Lighter Columns, 2010.
4. Lectured at or served on seminar panels at journalism schools at UNC-Chapel Hill, University of Maryland, Columbia University, Mary Washington University and Francis Marion University.