City looks to reduce lead time on approved bond projects ahead of expected 2026 proposals

City staffers hope to dramatically shorten the early lag in approved bond projects that typically add a year to construction and acquisition schedules, which can also increase costs or reduce the scope for proposed projects.

Last week’s meeting of the Bond Oversight Commission included an update on progress for Parks and Recreation Department projects included in the city’s 2018 bond package. Because of a number of factors, including delayed vendor selection and the city’s budget cycles, some projects approved in bond packages from 2006 and 2012 are still headed toward completion.

In discussing the execution schedule of most capital projects, Steve Grace, head of support for the Capital Delivery Services Department, said the slow spending immediately after voters approve a bond package is due to the need to finalize designs and detail budgets. Grace said a shift is in place to pre-fund some of those planning and design efforts using funds from prior bond packages, so construction and other improvements can be budgeted ahead of time, with the goal of a faster start and completion within eight years of voter approval.

Grace said PARD projects would benefit from moving toward more of a planning-ahead approach that is already in place for roads and other major city infrastructure work.

“In general, the first year following that bond election is really a developmental year, or it has been in the past where a lot of the scopes are finalized, a lot of the plans are made, execution methods are laid out … we now have the approval, we have the dollars, but we actually have to get dollars appropriated and we have to figure out how we’re gonna go about executing the bond,” he said.

“That’s part of our department and our city’s efforts to reduce the execution time or the delivery time of our capital project, so if we can do that on the front that’ll certainly help condense this to closer to that eight-year average that we’re aiming for.”

Grace and other staff on hand said shortening the delivery schedule for bond projects will be important for carrying out a bond package expected to take place in 2026 that will likely address sustainability needs, parks projects, and resources related to homelessness, among other initiatives. The bond advisory task force charged with assembling that bond package held its first meeting on Monday.

The oversight commission meeting included discussion on two bond proposals from 2018 that provided funding for PARD facilities improvements and land acquisition.

Proposition B, which directed $66.5 million toward improving several of the city’s cultural and arts centers, received heavy attention from the commission, in particular because of the budgetary limbo facing the construction of a new Dougherty Arts Center.

While work is advancing as scheduled for the expansion of the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center, and design and planning work are complete for the Asian American Resource Center and the George Washington Carver Museum, staff said the Dougherty has been delayed by a since-reversed directive from City Council to add a parking structure to the site. Even with the parking requirement since removed, there is a $25 million gap in available funds for the construction, which is now expected to be completed in phases.

PARD assistant director Liana Kallivoka said the city is ready to move forward with the construction of the “shell” of the new Dougherty, but only a portion of the facility would be usable without funding from the city’s next bond package.

“We are in the middle of discussion and we are waiting for further approval on how to proceed,” she said. “One potential road ahead of us would be to start construction and seamlessly go into phase two with only one mobilization and starting the construction. One of the advantages will be to not wait any longer to spend the funding that we already have so that we don’t even have future escalations with a potential next bond to finish the project.”

Photo by Billy Hathorn, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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