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Council presses staff for clearer CIP carryover presentation; finance says new software will improve reporting
Summary
Council members challenged presentation format after carryover rows were moved from columns to rows and asked staff to make carryover and bond‑dependent projects easier to identify; finance staff said the city will implement new budgeting software (Questica) to enable clearer reporting and tagging of projects by council district.
Council members pressed staff during the March 4 budget workshop about how the capital improvement book displays carryover and how bond‑dependent projects are shown.
Council Member Turner and others said carryover amounts were not easy to find in the individual project pages; staff explained that the report format had changed from showing carryover as a separate column on summary pages to listing estimated carryover as a row within individual project detail sheets. “It's showing as a row now instead of a column,” staff said.
Council members also asked how to identify projects that are effectively paused until a future bond election. Staff said the presentation uses a blue highlight to indicate projects that require bond voter authorization and that many park projects were moved into future years because a past bond initiative failed. Staff offered to provide project‑by‑project histories on request.
Finance staff announced the budget office is implementing new budgeting software (Questica) for the next cycle, which staff said will enable better reporting (including fields to tag a project’s council district and to make carryover and funding sources more visible). Staff recommended council members send any specific missing project questions to staff so they can be addressed in the follow‑up workshop.
Why it matters: Clear presentation of carryover and bond‑dependent projects affects council oversight and the public’s ability to understand which projects are funded and which are contingent on future voter approval. Staff said format changes and software improvements will make those relationships more transparent in subsequent materials.
