Building a Quality Community

Program Overview

Commerce City continues to be one of Colorado's fastest-growing communities. The City maintains over 260 miles of streets with bridges, traffic signals, bike lanes, and sidewalks and 840 acres of parks and open space. As a result, the demand for superior transportation, recreation, and lifestyle is high, and the city must continuously invest in capital maintenance and improvement efforts to meet that need.

Commerce City's Capital Investment Program (CIP) guides capital expenditures that provide budget predictability while maintaining and improving public infrastructure. Infrastructure investments typically require large-scale, multi-year resource commitments, which is why the city produces a five-year CIP plan that undergoes regular updates based on changing priorities and feedback from City Council.

What is a Capital Improvement?

A capital improvement is a project or effort that acquires, maintains, improves, or constructs a capital asset such as buildings, streets, bridges, bike lanes, parks and playgrounds, public art, or other real property of a permanent nature. Capital assets typically have a lifecycle of 15 years or more and non-recurring expenses in excess of $50,000. Needs assessments or studies that cost more than $50,000 and are conducted in anticipation of or in preparation for a capital improvement project or city-wide strategic planning documents may be included in the CIP.  

Capital projects are placed into the following categories:

  • Capital Maintenance Projects: Maintenance or replacement of existing city assets needed to meet regulatory or operational requirements. Examples include pavement management, replacement or installation of traffic signals, bridge replacements, emergency warning towers, sidewalk connections, drainage/water quality, and studies/assessments.
  • Capital Improvement Projects: Construction of new capital infrastructure or significant additions or alterations to existing assets that are beyond the scope of capital maintenance. Examples include new or expanded parks, recreation amenities, multi-modal transportation needs, and buildings.

Planning Process

At the start of each annual capital budget process, the Finance Department determines projected revenues and unbudgeted reserves, confirms the total needed for financial obligations, and sets annual capital maintenance targets. City departments then manage an internal process to define capital improvement needs and submit capital maintenance budgets and project requests to the Finance Department. The city's cross-departmental CIP team evaluates project requests based on the CIP project evaluation and scoring process.

Learn more about the current five-year CIP plan starting on page 127 of the city's 2025 adopted budget(PDF, 6MB) .

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