Board hears proposed five-year Capital Improvement Plan; staff to return May 6 for adoption

Washington County staff presented the proposed five-year Capital Improvement Plan (CIP), reviewing updated project narratives, revenue assumptions and five-year cost estimates across capital programs including information technology, facilities and parks, and land-use and transportation work. Staff said the plan provides greater transparency about project status and funding needs but includes many projects with funding not yet secured.

Interim Chief Financial Officer John Steyer said the county-wide CIP lists about $1.6 billion of projects across the planning horizon but cautioned that the figure includes several projects with unspecified funding sources. Finance staff and department leads presented project‑level pages for IT, facilities/fleet/parks, and land-use/transportation (LUT), and explained how the CIP will be synchronized with the operating budget and debt-service planning.

Highlights given to the board included information-technology priorities: the enterprise resource planning (ERP) replacement project (county-wide core finance/HR system) remains on schedule with go‑live targeted for December 2025; the ERP was described as the county’s core operating system and staff noted a roughly $20,000,000 implementation cost and ongoing subscription operating costs thereafter. IT also previewed an internal‑intranet replacement (Horizons) targeting a June–July launch and a phone-system replacement that staff said came in about $1,000,000 less than originally estimated and can be covered from existing balances.

Facility, fleet and parks director Laura Brown told the board the facilities portfolio covers roughly 40 buildings and about 2,000,000 square feet and the parks portfolio includes about 2,500 acres. Facilities staff showed a facilities condition-linked set of projects: planned critical infrastructure work funded by previous ARPA dollars, seismic design work for the Walnut Street Center, and multi‑year projects such as a planned Fairgrounds master‑plan implementation noting $15,000,000 programmed for fiscal 2026–27. Brown said the facilities CIP for the coming year includes roughly $65,000,000 of planned expenditures and that some large needs remain “not yet secured.”

Transportation and LUT staff said the department manages more than 1,300 miles of roads and 83 bridges; they presented about 94 projects in the transportation program and said projected expenditures in the upcoming five years amounted to roughly $595,000,000 (staff explained a prior billion‑dollar headline number included large amounts of past and current-year spending). LUT staff also explained the funding mix: MSTIP and system development charges, county and state gas tax, federal grants and an assumed future bond program. Staff described an assumed bond of around $150,000,000 in the CIP planning as an illustrative revenue assumption to support a slate of projects.

Steyer and department directors described process improvements for future CIPs, including embedding the CIP within Finance (a dedicated program manager), improved project templates, clearer five‑year phasing, and better linkage to the operating budget and debt‑service projections. Staff said departments have been iterating on the CIP for several years and this presentation represented the second full, county‑wide CIP effort with more granular project narratives and cost histories.

The board asked clarifying questions about schedule and funding: whether planning dollars for major projects (for example courthouse or jail planning) would precede construction programming, how deferred maintenance reflected in the facilities condition assessment would be addressed over time, and the county’s data governance and analytics capacity tied to the ERP replacement. Staff responded that planning typically precedes programming on the CIP (illustrated by courthouse planning phased into later CIP years), that the facilities condition work will move forward over multiple budget cycles, and that the ERP and a growing cross‑department data governance initiative will improve reporting and analytics.

Board members thanked staff for building the CIP and staff said they will return to the board on May 6 with a formal adoption request.