Work that will have to wait?

“Bare-bones” is the word being used within the walls of City Hall to describe Charlottesville’s proposed Capital Improvement Program for the upcoming budget.

“We’re doing the essentials,” said Ryan Davidson, the city’s budget and utilities analyst.

The $16.1 million proposed for the city’s fiscal 2010 CIP, in light of decreasing revenues in city coffers and an ailing national economy, is drastically less than the $29.3 million that was approved for the current budget. In fiscal 2008 and 2007, the amounts were $21.3 million and $12.6 million, respectively.

In addition to having a list of projects that have not been selected to get funding in the next five years, in 2010, $350,000 in West Main Street improvements, $250,000 for Forest Hills Park, $120,000 in neighborhood projects and

$300,000 for new sidewalks are some items that are proposed to have their 2010 funding completely removed. Others — like city-wide traffic improvements, trail development and sidewalk repair — would have less funding next year because of existing monies in their respective project accounts.

Planning Commissioner Mike Farruggio said he would like to see more money spent on things like traffic improvements because of the benefits provided to all city residents.

“You get an incredible bang for the buck,” Farruggio said at a work session Tuesday. Commissioner Mike Osteen agreed, citing the large impacts and crucial need for city-wide infrastructure improvements.

Although members of the Planning Commission did not get down to fine details on the projects included in the proposed program, several questioned how the list was whittled down to the options given to them.

“If we have certain priorities, we would need to be submitting those early as competing interests or complementary interests to different departments in the city,” Commissioner Genevieve Keller said.

The biggest chunk of the fiscal 2010 funds is slated for the Department of Parks and Recreation, which would receive $5.98 million, for large projects such as the construction of the new Smith Pool, which accounts for $5.7 million of that amount. Following that is $2.73 million for transportation and access improvements — which, among other things, would include more than $975,000 for street reconstruction and the city’s $450,000 match for the Meadowcreek Parkway — and $2.53 million in school capital projects.

Commissioner Bill Emory, who participated in a CIP ranking committee to examine projects proposed by the city’s departments, said he believed parkland acquisition was key for the city to do, yet it had already been scratched from the list of funded projects even though it was listed as a high priority.

“I thought that was a bad decision,” Emory said. In the past, the commission recommended to the City Council that it pursue that course of action.

The final capital projects list will be forwarded to the City Council in late February along with the rest of the fiscal 2010 budget. Before then, however, commissioners said they may want to consider if past projects’ rankings could be reevaluated, in addition to their role in shaping the top priorities in future years.

“We’ve never had to give [the CIP] this level of scrutiny before,” said Leslie Beauregard, the city’s budget director.