City finance staff on July 21 presented the City of Columbia’s proposed FY2026 Capital Improvement Plan (CIP), a multi‑year inventory of projects with costs of $10,000 or more, sources of funding and schedules for implementation.

Matthew Lou, director of finance, and Andrea Graham, budget officer, reviewed completed FY25 projects and listed FY26 priorities across departments — from parks improvements and pool renovations to fire apparatus replacements, sidewalks, water‑main work, sewer rehabilitation and landfill cell construction. Staff said CIP funding comes from multiple sources, including capital improvement sales tax (CIST), park and transportation sales taxes, bonds, enterprise revenues, general fund transfers and grants.

Staff described the calendar that leads to budget adoption: departments prepare requests in January–March, staff and administration review through spring, council review in July (this hearing), budget public hearings in August and formal budget adoption in September. Lou and Graham also identified the CIP dashboard and the project search page as places where the public can track project status, spending and schedule.

Council members asked for clearer, unified communication about how projects are chosen and prioritized. Councilmember Valerie Sample said planning and zoning historically reviewed the CIP and asked whether that was still standard practice; staff said that practice has varied and pledged to research past practice and the role of Planning and Zoning in prior years. Members also pressed for a single public dashboard that consolidates project updates and for material that explains the different routes a sidewalk or other local project may take into the CIP.

No vote was required at the public hearing; staff said the CIP will be part of the upcoming budget process and that more detailed project pages and dashboards will be available online. Public comments included one resident urging caution about the pace of projects given recent tax‑receipt declines.