CIP Yearly Report

When Mode Shift started its analysis of the Capital Improvement Program, the biggest obstacle was the poor quality of the report. It was difficult to read, incomplete, out of date, and erroneous.

Status

In August of 2017, the City published the yearly report using a new format with many improvements, starting with each project's layout:

Starting in August 2017, the new CIP layout gives the public a much better view of each project's goals, location, projected cost.

Other parts of the CIP's Transportation section were improved, such as better introduction and summary pages and hyperlinks to make navigation easier.

Some Links to the CIP:

Mode Shift urges Omaha residents to visit the City Planning website and browse the CIP for projects in their neighborhood or along their commute:

Click here for the City of Omaha's Planning Department CIP Page
Click here for the 2018-2023 CIP (published in 2017)
Click here for the City's map of CIP projects
Click here for Mode Shift's summary of the projects slated to receive $151 million of street bonds approved on May 15, 2018. Use the tabs for different views.

Action

The CIP yearly report can still be improved in several ways, but most of these depend on action taken elsewhere. Mode Shift will cover this in detail in the Project Execution section, but in summary:

Include all project cost. The current CIP includes only Street Bond expenditures and for a couple of years, nothing was reported. Now that projects have a unique lifetime ID number, the City can report all costs.

Each project's lifetime expenditures should be included as well as the project's original budget. This would show if the project is trending to be on budget or not.
Each project's original schedule should be included, along with the current revised schedule. This would how if the project is being built as planned.
Each year, several projects with zero appropriations receive millions of funding. Such unplanned projects should be marked flagged, and an explanation should be provided.
Include project metrics. Whether the Complete Streets "performance measures" or simple metrics to how how a project is aligned (or not) with a strategic goal, metrics should be included by project.

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