The Capital Improvements Element is a required component of the local government's comprehensive plan.
Section 163.3177(3)(a), Florida Statutes, explains the purpose of the Capital Improvements Element is to “consider the need for and the location of public facilities in order to encourage the efficient use of such facilities.”
The provisions of this section require that capital improvement projects which are necessary to ensure that adopted level of service standards for public facilities will be achieved and maintained for the five-year period, will be adopted into a Schedule of Capital Improvements included with this element. The schedule of capital improvements should include any publicly funded projects of federal, state, or local government and may include privately funded projects for which the local government has no fiscal responsibility. The schedule must be coordinated with the applicable metropolitan planning organization’s transportation improvement program and long-range transportation plan.
Section 163.3164(7), Florida Statutes, establishes the definition of "capital improvement” to be physical assets, excluding items like operation and maintenance services and studies. There is no requirement to include these types of non-physical asset expenditures in the Schedule of Capital Improvements
The Schedule of Capital Improvements does not itself allocate the use any County funds or those of other entities.
It only identifies projects, that may be funded or unfunded, that are deemed necessary to ensure that adopted level of service standards for public facilities will be achieved and maintained. Projects must directly increase or maintain adopted levels of service. This means only project which increase the capacity of a facility, such as adding lanes to a road; expanding the capacity of a water treatment plant; or adding land or new facilities to a park are considered for inclusion.
The proposed update presented here includes capacity-building projects identified in the County’s latest Capital Improvement Program(CIP), FDOT transportation projects identified in the North Florida TPO’s latest Transportation Improvement Program(TIP), and water and wastewater projects identified in JEA’s Water Resource Master Plan.
Regarding public school facilities, the Public School Facilities and Capital Improvements Elements include policies (see PSF.05.03 and CI.09.02) stating that the five-year district facilities work plan adopted by the Nassau County School Board is adopted by reference, and is not subject to state review. The County will, over the next year, be coordinating with the School Board to review and evaluate present policies concerning school concurrency, which is no longer a requirement under State law, and may recommend changes to present polices in the Comprehensive Plan.
The 2011 revisions to Ch. 163, F.S. removed the requirement that the annual update to the Schedule of Capital Improvements be adopted and transmitted as a comprehensive plan amendment to the state land planning agency (the Department of Economic Opportunity). The update to the schedule may be now accomplished by local ordinance and will not be considered an amendment to the comprehensive plan and is therefore not subject to review by the State.
The schedule should be reviewed annually by the local government to reflect the timing, location and funding of capital projects to achieve and maintain adopted level of service standards for public facilities that are necessary to implement the comprehensive plan. |