Building a Better NYC Capital Budget

Commitment to Infrastructure

The City of New York has invested heavily in the City's physical infrastructure - its roads and bridges, schools and libraries, water and sewer facilities, parks and cultural institutions.

The de Blasio Administration, capitalizing on the record investments of the previous administration, has offered capital budgets comparable to those years. Meanwhile, the City's latest significant, ten-year strategy is the largest in history. The City is to be commended for this significant commitment to infrastructure.

At the same time, New York City is expanding at an unheralded rate: population growth has reached 8.5 million and could top 9 million in the next decade. A building boom is underway, increasing density not just in the City center, but in emerging business districts and residential neighborhoods in all five boroughs.

This growth and private investment puts remarkable strain on public facilities, visible in ways large and small: crowded schools; wear and tear on streets, bridges, and environmental facilities; dense residential neighborhoods with limited open space; and public housing and healthcare facilities with substantial capital backlogs. Today, there is an unprecedented demand for new capital investment.

The City needs to do more to address these challenges, an effort that will require increased funding and a rethinking of the ways the City plans and executes its capital program.

As part of its Capital Budget Campaign, the New York Building Congress is proposing a suite of specific improvements to the City's capital planning, procurement, and project management practices that, together, can improve the City's capacity to maintain its assets, while controlling the high cost of construction and bringing more projects online more rapidly.

These proposals are not exhaustive, but represent the first essential steps to bringing construction costs under control and expanding the City's capital program.

The City's investment in new transit infrastructure resulted in billions of dollars of new private investment on Manhattan's West Side.