Cape's 2025 Capital Improvement Plan sees changes from last year

The Cape Girardeau City Council approved the city's 2025-2030 Capital Improvement Program (CIP) on Monday, March 17, at City Hall.

The plan saw a few changes from last year's CIP, and tallied up the city projects finished in 2024.

The CIP is a proposed plan for fiscal years 2025 through 2030, which also includes projections for 2031 to 2035. The total expenditures for the 10-year-planning period amount to $220,923,175, with $74,912,000 worth of the projects considered unfunded and $61,257,000 "contingent upon the determination of funding".

According to last year's CIP, the 10-year projection amount was around $253,256,314, about $32 million more than this year.

There were also changes in how some funds were categorized in the 2025 plan, including Cape Girardeau Police Department funds, Cape Girardeau finance director Lisa Mills said. While there are some capital improvement needs for the police department that are under the public safety trust, some needs that were listed in the 2024 plan are now considered normal operating expenditures.

"What you saw in police (in 2024) definitely was all that technology, all those subscriptions that we have for the technology, the Flock, the ShotSpotter, the cameras, the body cameras, all the laptops, all of that stuff was included in here. But like I said, they're operational," Mills said.

Mills said the Public Safety Trust spending in the plan is for the police and fire department together. The Public Safety Trust with the current tax rate is set to expire in December 2035.

The plan shows off the amount of money in terms of capital improvement projects that have and are set to be completed in fiscal year 2024-2025. The document states $19,503,528 worth of projects are set to be completed in the current fiscal year.

"[Years] 25-26 projections are pretty large. We're projecting 36 million (dollars) in completions, but that's because we're trying to finish off the last of the TTF (Transportation Trust fund) funds before we move into that new tax issue," Mills said.