Annapolis reviews capital-improvement priorities as City Dock costs rise; council pushes for clearer project tracking

The Annapolis City Council reviewed the proposed fiscal 2026 capital-improvement program and asked staff to make project status and timelines easier for both council members and the public to track. The discussion, held at the council work session on April 24, centered on several project cost or scope changes — most notably an updated City Dock cost estimate — and on steps to improve transparency and community engagement.

Bert Vogel, public works director, said the city adjusted its City Dock (referred to in the presentation as “CitiDoc”) estimates to reflect known construction costs and other items not included in last year’s budget tables. “This year, we wanted to make everything match,” Vogel said, describing an added roughly $15 million in identified funding and cost items that were not carried as firm figures in last year’s book.

Vogel gave a consolidated figure of about $88,000,000 for the City Dock program. He said that amount “breaks down, kind of like this”: $50,000,000 in outside funding, $6,000,000 the city transfers to itself, and $32,000,000 of city funding applied to the project. Asked later to clarify, Vogel characterized the…