Riviera Beach holds workshop on comprehensive plan’s capital improvement and infrastructure elements; board permits alternates to vote

Riviera Beach’s Planning & Zoning Board held a workshop on Jan. 23, 2025 to review draft language for the comprehensive plan’s capital improvement and infrastructure elements, hear how the city scores and prioritizes capital projects, and discuss water, stormwater and transportation objectives. The board unanimously approved a motion to grant the alternates present voting rights for the meeting and unanimously adopted the agenda.

The workshop centered on how the city will prioritize projects in its five‑year capital improvement program (CIP), how the city defines and applies concurrency criteria for new development, and how infrastructure objectives address water supply, wastewater, stormwater and coastal vulnerability. Principal planner Suneet Simon led the presentation and asked the board to review goal and objective language; Assistant Finance Director Nydia Reynolds described the departmental process that feeds the CIP.

Why it matters: the capital improvement element sets the projects that guide the city’s budgeting and capital spending for the next five years and is attached to the comprehensive plan that officials will use to evaluate development and long‑range investments.

Simon described a hands‑on review method used in the workshop and summarized the CIP’s role: "This one is to ensure that the public facilities that we manage are available for our community and meets the needs of our community... we review it every year as we prioritize what needs to be on the top of the list of what we are going to be putting tax dollars towards for improvements in our city," she said.

Reynolds summarized how projects reach the CIP: each department fills a project form in the annual budget cycle; staff…