Planning Commission Wants More Say in City’s Capital Improvement Projects Process

The Planning Commission last week established steps that could give commissioners a stronger voice on Capital Improvement Projects (CIP) at the beginning and the end of the budgetary process. 

The commissioners discussed the Planning Commission’s role in the Capital Improvement Project process and agreed to take three steps. 

The commission will establish a CIP subcommittee of the Planning Commission, and asked the City Manager to schedule an annual meeting in front of the subcommittee in the fall to discuss proposed projects and priorities with representatives from Transportation and Public Works.

The subcommittee would evaluate the projects and priorities and share them with the commission. 

The CIP budget would then come back to the commission in the spring before it is submitted to the City Council.

“Pasadena spends millions of dollars and years of effort to prepare both our General Plan and the Specific Plans for areas like Lincoln Avenue, North Lake Avenue and the Central District. State law says cities should evaluate their capital spending to ensure those plans are actually implemented,” said Commissioner Rick Cole. “The Planning Commission is unanimously asking the City Manager to open up the Capital Improvement Plan process to assess whether the $1.5 billion the City plans on spending on capital projects over the next five years matches the vision in the plans the Council has adopted.”

Cole told Pasadena Now that the Commission isn’t asking for any authority or control. 

“Just the opportunity at the beginning and the end of the process to provide our advice to the Council — as well as the public forum for the public to weigh in. That’s our role — to not only recommend plans, but recommend the ‘reasonable and practical, means for implementing them.

“It’s not a theoretical problem. Too many of our visionary plans never come to pass because of lack of implementation. A wonderful plan was adopted for North Lake in 1996, another one in 2007 and the Planning Commission just reviewed the final draft for another one in 2023. All great plans, but about the only thing that got implemented was the sycamores that got planted twenty years ago. They are nice, but it is still fast food alley, local businesses are struggling and it’s dirtier, with more vacancies and feels less safe than it did back in 1996.”

The steps were taken after the Planning Commission discussed its role in the CIP process on Wednesday.

The CIP is an essential tool for planning and implementing infrastructure projects in Pasadena, and it typically covers a period of several years and outlines various projects such as road repairs, bridge construction, park improvements, and other such projects.

According to a City staff report, the CIP must have a total estimated cost of at least $75,000 and meet one or more of the following criteria: Address a particular safety issue; Existing maintenance efforts are no longer satisfactory to keep a facility in good repair; and Existing facility is no longer adequate to meet the demand.

As part of the Fiscal Year 2024 Budget process presentation on the CIP, the Planning Commission requested a discussion of the role of the Planning Commission in the review of CIP projects.

The CIP budget process is managed by the Department of Public Works. The department prepares a Capital Improvement Program for adoption as part of the city budget every year.

A “call for new projects” is released to provide a formal process for the Council, Commissioners, and the public to submit new project ideas.

After a list of projects is prepared and prioritized it is reviewed by the City Manager. The City Manager’s Recommended CIP budget is prepared and sent to the appropriate Commissions/Committees for review and support.

The Transportation Advisory Commission reviews Street and Streetscapes, Transportation, and Parking. Recreation and Parks Commission reviews Parks and Landscaping and Arroyo Projects, excluding Hahamongna projects which are reviewed by the Hahamongna Watershed Parks Advisory Committee. The Northwest Commission reviews all projects located in Northwest Pasadena.

The Planning Commission reviews all projects for General Plan consistency.

Commissioner Juliana Delgado said the community has spent countless hours in crafting the City’s General Plan and its specific plans—Pasadena’s adopted marching orders for future growth and development– yet there seems to be no coordinated effort to arrive at  its vision in a holistic way when it comes to budgeting each year for capital projects. 

“In the past, the Planning Commission, charged with ensuring that projects in the City’s Capital Improvement Program (CIP) are consistent with the General Plan, has weighed in at the very end of a process that the Dept. of Public Works coordinates, and has had little to say about needed projects or prioritization,” Delgado said. “Thus, Commission recommendations to the City Council in the past have been somewhat perfunctory as its review of new CIP projects comes too late, with too little detail about new projects and the state of the entire CIP.

To be proactive and all-inclusive in ensuring the General Plan’s vision comes to be, the Commission unanimously agreed on a new internal procedure.  It calls for Commission participation each year at the very beginning of the process, as early as October when Public Works launches its annual call for projects, holding a public forum to discuss discrepancies between the City’s planning documents and its CIP.  It also agreed via a standing subcommittee to take a detailed look at the entire CIP and compare it to the adopted implementation programs in the General Plan and specific plans.  If there are implementation projects that have been overlooked and not on the CIP list—such as funds for affordable housing, a streetscape plan for Lincoln Avenue—then the Commission, in taking General Plan consistency review to a far more engaged and comprehensive level, will propose them.  This is an important step not just in ensuring the community is heard but also that limited public resources are spent on projects that will actually result in the future it envisions.”