My general concerns about the Capital portion of the SacRT budget document as presented to the public to date:

Generally, I feel the document reads too much like an accounting of funding procurements, with not enough details as to:
 Time-bounded $ allocations. When is an allocation intended to be used – Either a date or a milestone.
 Project-bounded $ allocations (sub-projects of the full project). Which sub-projects will get what $.
 Every project should have a compact description blurb that calls out:
– How it aligns to organizational strategic goals.
– Expected completion date (best guess).
– Impact if delayed. Maybe some kind of number rating thing (1-5) of whether the project could be culled without having an egregious impact.
-Whether any of the allocation $ is not tied to that particular project and could be shared/shifted if needed.
 Snapshot at time of document as to what has already been spent and what percentage of the project is finished.

That last bullet item could be the seed for regular updates in the GM monthly reports that dig more into Earned Value details of the projects. This should be in theory trivial since all these project need to report to the GM along some hierarchical track – The project status should always be available, anyway, in other words.

Overall, my feedback relates to getting to a point where anyone can pick up this document and get a very good overview of what the capital fiscal priorities are, what boundaries of time we are working with, and what could potentially be culled in grave funding deficits. This gives all of us, staff, board, public a fighting chance to plan ahead and react nimbly to any unanticipated outcomes.

Some may comment that the details that I call out do not belong in a budget document. If so, I would counter that this document is the only time that all the stakeholders have a voice across all capital projects.

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