Public works director outlines FY2026 capital program, flags staffing and overhead concerns

Public Works Director Bur Vogel presented an interactive overview of the FY2026 capital improvement program to the Annapolis City Council on March 23, demonstrating a new online CIP story map and walking members through the funding table and major projects.

Vogel said the city council had appropriated about $24,000,000 in direct city funding into the FY2026 capital program and emphasized that the adopted plan is a snapshot that changes as projects advance or receive external grants. "If you look at page 10," Vogel said during his presentation, "you can see a rundown of all of the different funding that funds the various projects for the year." He encouraged council members and the public to use the story map on the public works website to view project locations and status.

Why it matters: the CIP governs which capital repairs, waterfront and mobility projects move forward and how the city blends grants, bonds and pay-as-you-go funding. Vogel said the composition of those funding sources matters for operating budgets and long-term debt capacity.

Vogel identified three main funding buckets—bonds, capital reserve and PAYGO—and explained how those choices affect whether the city pays interest or uses cash on hand. He also called attention to carryover and "prior approved" appropriations that can inflate headline totals: "that 71 (million) is a bit misleading because it includes some projects that were previously money borrowed," he said, noting that the snapshot reflects historic borrowing and not solely new spending.

The director called out several specific items discussed in the adopted FY2026 materials: recurring maintenance for general roadways on the order of $3–4 million a year, statutory and project-level funding details that are visible on individual project pages in the story map, and instances where early estimates have shifted—"Stanton Center" was listed at $4.9 million in older materials but Vogel said the latest project estimate he received from Director Johnson was $14.9 million.

Vogel also spoke at length about staffing and the way the city allocates administrative overhead to capital projects. He described a period when engineering staff were overextended and noted targeted hires (a traffic engineer and a grant administration position) and one remaining project manager position to be filled. "We've got 12 projects she's working on—like that's too much," Vogel said, describing the need to balance internal capacity with consultant work. He recommended careful use of consultants and reminded council members that projects without sufficient in‑house management can sit for years.

On overhead, Vogel described the existing flat-percentage method (cited as roughly 5%) that attaches an operating-budget charge to individual capital projects and argued it can create misleading spikes when large, grant-dependent projects appear in the CIP. "If you use city dock as example, let's say in 2024 city dock has a $70,000,000 project and 3 and a half million dollars goes into city overhead back then," he said, explaining how grant assumptions that do or do not materialize can distort the general fund.

Council members asked practical questions about enterprise funds (sewer projects and sewer fund bonds), visibility of funding at the enterprise level, the amount of unencumbered balances on projects, and whether a ward-level project list could be added to the public materials. Vogel and staff said those details can be surfaced on individual project pages and discussed adding ward-identification data to the public site for transparency, if not in the formal budget document.

Next steps: Vogel closed by pointing council members to the CIP story map and the PDF of the capital budget for more detail and recommended that the finance and public works teams consider options for smoothing overhead allocations and tying overhead recognition more closely to work-in-place rather than project headline amounts.