For the first time, the City of Seattle is allowing residents or neighborhood groups to nominate a project for the City’s Capital Improvement Program (CIP). The CIP allocates existing funds and revenues to rehabilitate, restore, improve, and add to the City’s physical plant. The CIP covers a six-year planning horizon, but a new one is adopted each year to reflect ongoing changes, additions, and deletions. The desired outcome of this process is to engage the public in a way that improves the information available to City departments and officials as they make decisions about possible capital projects.

A CIP project involves the construction, purchase, or renovation of buildings, parks, streets, or other physical structures. A capital improvement generally has a useful life of five or more years. It also provides one of the following two elements: has a cost of approximately $50,000 or more or satisfies the functionality of a capital asset. A capital improvement is not a recurring capital outlay item (such as a motor vehicle or a fire engine) or a maintenance expense (such as fixing a leaking roof or painting park benches). Acquisition of equipment is not a capital project unless it is an integral part of the capital project.

If you would like to nominate a project, you must submit an application form. This form is must be submitted to Candice Chin, Department of Finance, by 9 a.m., Monday, March 20, 2006. . are strongly recommended. An electronic version of this form, the instructions, and other information are available at:

For more information, contact Candice Chin at: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or (206) 233-7014