Title
Preliminary Capital Facilities Plan, 2025-2030 Financial Plan Briefing
Recommended Action
Committee Recommendation:
Not referred to a committee.
City Manager Recommendation:
Receive a briefing Preliminary Capital Facilities Plan, 2025-2030 Financial Plan.
Report
Issue:
Whether to receive a briefing Preliminary Capital Facilities Plan, 2025-2030 Financial Plan.
Staff Contact:
Casey Schaufler, Associate Planner, Community Planning and Development, 360.753.8254
Joyce Phillips, Principal Planner, Community Planning and Development, 360.570.3722
Presenter(s):
Joyce Phillips, Principal Planner, Community Planning and Development
Background and Analysis:
The Capital Facilities Plan (CFP) is Volume 2 of the City’s 20-year Comprehensive Plan adopted by the City Council in 2014. The CFP portion of the Plan is updated annually.
The CFP identifies which capital facilities are necessary to support development and/or growth, as well as infrastructure improvements needed in our community. Most projects identified are directly related to the applicable master plan, such as the Parks, Arts and Recreation Plan, the Storm and Surface Water Plan, the Transportation Master Plan, and other similar plans. The Comprehensive Plan covers a 20-year time horizon; however, the Preliminary CFP, 2025-2030 Financial Plan is a 6-year financial plan. It is required by the Growth Management Act and includes specific projects, cost estimates, funding sources and strategies to implement the plan.
City staff annually reviews and updates the 6-year plan to ensure it can fund and implement the comprehensive plan vision, showing how the city will provide governmental services at adopted levels of service standards for the existing and projected population growth in the City and Urban Growth Area.
The Planning Commission is responsible for reviewing the plan for consistency with the other chapters of the Comprehensive Plan, holding a Public Hearing, and providing a recommendation to the City Council. City Council is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the Preliminary CFP in late October, with planned adoption of the final version in December (as may be amended by the Council).
Climate Analysis:
The wide variety of projects included in the CFP, to occur over a number of years, can make it challenging to assess changes to emissions. Overall, the projects proposed help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by addressing energy use in city-owned buildings, transportation projects that also benefit bicyclists and pedestrians, and projects designed to increase capacity and efficiency or our drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater systems.
By continuing to serve our community members, as well as accommodating new growth, within the existing City limits and urban growth areas, we are working to create a compact and urban community. This helps us reduce emissions from the transportation sector by promoting active forms of transportation and providing for shorter trips required in order to meet our daily needs. It allows for the delivery of drinking water, sanitary sewer, and stormwater treatment facilities in a contained,
compact area which is more efficient and costs less to serve than it would otherwise.
The CFP supports the following portions of the Climate Mitigation Plan:
• Reduce energy use in existing buildings.
• Reduce energy use in new construction or redevelopment. The new maintenance facility for Waste ReSources will meet or exceed current energy efficiency requirements.
• Helps implement land use policies that increase urban density and reduce urban sprawl. Compact, walkable communities help increase urban density and reduce sprawl. The CFP includes several transportation projects that support compact environments for bicyclists and pedestrians.
• Increase the efficiency of the transportation system. The variety of multimodal transportation improvements in the CFP aim to provide greater mobility options and consider people trips rather than volume to capacity ratios for automobiles. This considers efficiency of the whole system. It also supports the related strategy of increasing the use of active forms of travel, such as walking and biking.
• Increase the use of public transit. Sidewalks, bicycle lanes, safety improvements and streetlights all support greater use of public transit.
• Increase the efficiency of water and wastewater infrastructure. The CFP includes replacement of aging and small diameter pipes and projects that address seismic issues.
• Divert more solid waste from landfills. The new Waste ReSources facility will help the city capture more recyclable materials that would otherwise go to the landfill.
While not every project will directly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, by providing the infrastructure and services necessary to support our existing community and anticipated growth within the growth boundary, we can serve a greater number of people efficiently and compactly, while also providing parks, open spaces, and fire protection.
Equity Analysis:
Equity is considered as the master plans the capital projects generally come from are developed. In addition, equity issues are considered during budgeting decision making. The City strives to balance equity in its capital projects by including projects in various parts of the City, across multiple types of projects (transportation, parks, drinking water, etc.), and by improving accessibility in City facilities (ADA Transition Plan for accessibility). This work is done within the constraints of the funding sources and the limitations associated with many of them.
Some of the high level data that is considered is that in Olympia, roughly 37% of all households are cost burdened, with almost half of those households being severely cost-burdened. BIPOC members of our community are more likely to be cost-burdened than others. Approximately 42% of Olympians have a household income of less than $50,000. Approximately 15% of our population live in poverty. In 2021, 13.5% of people in Olympia have a disability, up from 12.9% in 2016. Additionally, obesity rates have been rising in children and adults in Washington State.
Neighborhood/Community Interests (if known):
Specific neighborhood or community interests are not yet known, as the plan is just being introduced to the community. Community members have been and will continue to be given the opportunity to review and comment on this proposal through multiple Advisory Committee reviews. The Planning Commission conducted a public hearing on September 16th and no public testimony was received. Additionally, the City Council will hold an additional public hearing on October 29th.
City staff works closely with the Bicycle, Pedestrian Advisory Committee, the Parks & Recreation Advisory Committee, and the Utility Advisory Committee to identify and prioritize projects in the CFP. These committees are likely to provide comments to the City Council as well. Last year, the majority of public comments received were related to sidewalk issues. It is anticipated that there will be additional comments about sidewalks this year as well.
Financial Impact:
Capital investments are expensive and require years of planning and funding in order to be constructed. The proposed budget for 2025, across all capital programs, is $49,921,417. For the years of 2025-2030, it is estimated at a total of $285,053,660.
The Preliminary CFP includes a variety of funding sources that will be used to cover the costs of these projects. This includes state and federal grants, general facilities charges, impact fees, general funds, use of fund balances, and other financing sources. It also includes transfers from Real Estate Excise Taxes (REET), the Olympia Metropolitan Parks District, State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) mitigation fees, Transportation Benefit District (TBD) fees and sales taxes, utility revenues, and voted utility tax.
Options:
1. Receive the briefing.
2. Do not receive the briefing.
3. Receive the briefing at another time.
Attachments:
Link to Preliminary 2025-2030 Capital Facilities Plan