Oroville staff proposes scoring system to rank 68 city projects; council praises plan

Alyssa, a city staff member leading public works planning, presented a new project‑prioritization framework to the Oroville City Council on April 1, describing a scored, weighted system intended to help the city choose which projects to advance given limited staff and budget resources.

The proposal assigns numeric scores across 11 criteria — including urgency, public safety/resilience, community and economic benefit, cost, feasibility, equity, environment, compliance, risk of noncompletion, public health, and traffic/congestion relief — and weights urgency and public safety more heavily. Alyssa told the council there are 68 projects in the inventory and her high‑level estimate for combined costs is about $130,000,000.

The nut graf: the scoring system is meant to produce a ranked project list so the city can focus staff time and grant applications on a smaller set of projects and coordinate with utilities and regional partners more effectively.

Using the proposed approach, staff produced an initial top‑10 list that includes: Riverbed apartment drainage; coordination with Caltrans on State Route 162 (CAPM project); storm drain work behind Mugshots; sewer lift station emergency pumping and modernization; the Montgomery roundabout; Ishii Middle School complete‑streets improvements; a citywide ADA baseline study; Table Mountain Boulevard sidewalk and railing work; a large Foothill storm‑drain replacement; and other high‑priority drainage and slope stabilization projects. Alyssa said many projects overlap district boundaries and that costs shown in the presentation incorporate construction, consultants and staff time.

Alyssa described the scoring scale and examples for each level (for instance, urgency scores reflect whether a project can be deferred, must be done within two to three years, or must be initiated immediately to avoid high‑consequence impacts). She said the initial scoring was done by staff and would be reviewed by Tim Caber and the public works managers before finalizing priorities.

Council members expressed strong support for the approach. Councilmember Sean Weber called the work “brilliant” and praised the detail and the use of Smartsheet dashboards to publish and share the project list; Councilmember Johnstone and others likewise urged colleagues to copy the spreadsheet for district reference and to add missing projects where needed.

The presentation did not include a formal council vote; staff asked council members to review district packets that list projects affecting each councilmember and to return comments so staff can finalize weighting and begin scheduling the top priorities. Alyssa said the list will remain a living document and can be adjusted if a project’s condition or risk changes.

Ending: staff will score and publish the priority list, align resources for the top projects, and return with updates; council members recommended district reviews and additional public‑facing dashboards to track progress.