City finance and public-works directors gave the Transportation & Mobility Board a detailed look at capital funding options and near-term capacity constraints, saying the city has a mix of revenue, grants and debt tools but limited crew capacity to deliver projects.

Laurie Mata, the city's director of finance, summarized funding tools the city can use: general obligation bonds (voter approval required and limited by charter-assessed-value caps), revenue bonds, state revolving fund loans (often used for water and stormwater), Certificates of Participation (COPs) that do not require voter approval, budgeted appropriations and a capital-improvement sales tax fund created in 2021. "For 2026, we have $75,500,000 planned funded capital projects from different sources and $8,900,000 unfunded," Mata said.

Mata said the five-year funded plan totals about $181,000,000 and staff are tentatively planning to issue about $30,500,000 in COPs in 2026 to finance town-hall improvements, the downtown redevelopment area and the service center. She also said the capital-improvement sales tax fund currently brings in roughly $10–$12 million per year.

Board members pressed staff on the gap between planned projects and funding. Staff and the board agreed that even if funding were found for unfunded items, the city's operations and construction crews are at or near capacity. Brent Soderlund, director of public works, told the board that staff can reasonably deliver the funded $75.5 million of projects in 2026 but do not have the capacity to add a large number of extra projects in the same year.

Councillors and staff discussed charter borrowing limits tied to assessed values (Mata cited an assessed value figure of about $1.3 billion that affects GO bond capacity) and the trade-offs of debt versus pay-as-you-go funding. Staff said they expect to use a combination of debt tools and appropriations and will refine the five-year CIP as the TMP prioritization and project-estimate refinements proceed.

The board did not adopt any fiscal policy at the meeting. Staff said they will return with refined CIP priorities after the TMP and more detailed project estimates are available.