Durham County
HomeCapital Improvement Plan Documents
Capital Improvement Plans
Below are links to the latest Durham County Capital Improvement Plan and Facilities Master Plan Update. The Facilities Master Plan Update document helps inform needed projects for the County over the next ten years. The capital improvement plan is updated biennially (every two years) and spans a 10-year outlook. The current capital improvement plan spans FY 2022 through 2032, while the next updated plan will span FY 2024 through 2033.
A Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) is important to the County and its citizens for several reasons. First, it states the intentions and priorities of the Board of County Commissioners concerning capital needs (large projects that will take multiple years to complete, generally with a budget of $1 million or more) for the next ten years, secondly, it defines the fiscal and logistical constraints that factor into the timing of each project. While capital projects in the CIP extend into the future for ten years, the fiscal effects of said projects extend up to 30 years through annual debt service payments. Third, this plan shows the costs and anticipated funding sources to be used to achieve these goals. Finally, a ten-year CIP is just that, a plan, and while a great deal of effort and thought have already gone into assessing future needs, the plan mostly offers a starting point from which yearly comparisons, fiscal and environmental changes, unforeseen needs, and public discussion can ensue.
Two major functions of a capital improvement plan are the identification and prioritization of capital projects over a specified amount of time (in this case 10 years) and the financing choices used to fund planned capital projects. The selection of projects for Durham County’s updated CIP was born out of a detailed grading process that involved costs, needs, timeliness, and other criteria.
The financing choices supporting a CIP are more limited. Identifying a particular type of financing for a specific project includes assessing legal funding criteria for specific types of projects, County debt capacity, securing and keeping a high County bond rating (triple A), the total cost of issuing different types of debt, debt payment schedules, planned tax increases due to increased debt payments, and anticipated voter support for bond referendums. While finding worthwhile capital projects to support is all too easy, finding the appropriate debt vehicles and revenue to support debt payments is much more complicated.