The Town of Yarmouth upholds the Capital Investment Plan as one of our key strategies to achieve our operational and financial objectives. It's an integral component of the town's long-term financial plan.
Why a Capital Investment Plan?
Managing an entire town with multiple departments and commitments is a real challenge that we don't take lightly. We work hard to ensure that our organization is allocating the right level of funding to each program so that we meet our responsibilities and ensure the town's long-term sustainability.
The objective of the plan is to use risk management concepts and other principles to provide an optimal balance between the needs and costs for repairing, replacing, and upgrading assets with the affordability to do so. More specifically, the plan delivers:
- long-range strategic planning and prioritization of asset needs
- improved evidence-informed decision-making
- long-term financial requirements to sustain the assets
- improved capital planning processes
- consistent asset management practices and measures across the organization
Capital Investment Plan Overview
To help us determine priorities for capital expenditures, the Town of Yarmouth uses a Capital Investment Planning tool. Basically, this means that we create a long list of potential capital projects, and then each is scored against a set of criteria. This helps us determine which should be given consideration for funding. Items that score "5" against all criteria are already funded/cost-shared or completed.
Our results from using this tool are presented to Council and also shared with other levels of government when seeking cost-sharing on infrastructure projects. It’s important to know that the amounts used in the Total Project Cost are intended to reflect the Town of Yarmouth’s estimated cost, often developed before engineered design work has been completed. They are estimates only.