Introduction
How the City Pays for Public Works
Steps for Organizing
  1. Identify What Needs Fixing
  2. Consider the Impact
  3. Find Leaders
  4. Become an Expert
  5. Educate Your Community
  6. Create a Community Capital Improvement Plan
  7. Increase your Access Through Citizen participation
  8. Follow up on Your Community Plan
  9. Hold the City Accountable
  10. Demand Progress Reports
Organizing Tips
Neighborhood Plannning and NCBG
The NCBG Neighborhood Atlas

1. Identify What Needs Fixing

With information gathered from the survey and capital needs budgeting worksheet, define you community's capital improvement needs.

This survey is designed to help you assess the physical condition of your neighborhood and map out where new public funds are needed.  The structures you are looking at will all:

- Be in the public domain, which means that they are on City property or they are used or shared by the public.

- Be "brick and mortar" projects, requiring major structural improvements, and which last for many years;

- Require public funds from the City of Chicago's Capital Improvement Program

Map Your Community Assets!

Community Assets are goods and services that make a community livable and sustainable. This can include parks, public transt, schools, community centers, libraries, police and fire stations, and shopping districts. Assets are those items that are valuable and don't depreciate.

Walk or drive through your community with a partner.  Go once to get an overview of the neighborhood and note down the location or address of problem areas.  Go through a second time to write more specific comments.  Write down the exact location of problem areas or note in which block the problem occurs and on what side of thee street. 

Neighborhood Capital Budget Group (407 S. Dearborn, Suite 1360, Chicago, IL  60605) cangive you Maps and surveys to Help you with community assets. Please contact us if you'd like more in-depth help.  Once you've looked at your community assets, take the results back to your community stakeholders.  Call a meeting to discuss the results and decide which improvements require immediate action or would most benefit the neighborhood.  Create your own Community Improvement Plan.

2. Consider the Impact

Look at the social implications for increased capital improvements in your area.  Is street lighting sufficient for increasing safety in your neighborhood?  Are jobs producing businesses leaving your area because viaducts are too low for trucks to access the location? 

3. Find Leaders

Identify the residents, community organizations, businesses, and concerned others that have been affected by neglected infrastructure.

4. Become an Expert

Obtain from the City of Chicago's Office of Budget and Management the following items:

- the current Capital Improvement Program

- the latest Mid-Year or Year-End Capital Construction Report

- the Capital Project Request Form

- the breakdown of the CIP for your ward and Neighborhood Planning District

- Contact the Neighborhood Capital Budget Group for historical and present data about capital investments in your community and for additional CIP maps of your community area.

5. Educate Your Community

With the information gathered on the capital improvement needs of your community, hold a meeting to inform concerned community members of what has been identified as the infrastructure issue and what can be done to get the capital investments needed.

6. Create a Community Capital Improvement Plan

Based on your community capital investment needs, create a plan for your community.

- include data from capital improvement project request form   filled out by community members

- compare your survey findings with the City's plan for your community

- prioritize your capital needs based on budgeting worksheet

- consider the social and economic impacts of increased capital         investments (job creation, retention, encourages private investment, improves community look, enhances safety, increases quality of life, encourages retail activity, increase mobility, decreases crime, etc.)

- develop a plan that reflects the historical, cultural, and traditional significance of your community.

- share your plan with the community and require feedback

- require input from all involved community members

- get petitions signed for you plan "door to door" or in a neighborhood store

7. Increase your Access Through Citizen participation

- Attend the City of Chicago's Annual CIP Public Hearings and learn about the City Hall's plan for your community.  Bring your community capital improvement plan with you.

- Attend the City of Chicago's Citizen Capital Improvement Advisory Committee (CIAC) Meeting.

- Actively engage public officials in your community's capital improvement planning process. Invite the Alderperson(s) for your community area, commissioners from OBM, DPD and DOT meet with City Council Committee members and CIAC board members that are critical to advancing your community plan

- Submit your Community Capital Improvement Plan to the City through the Office of Budget and Management.

- Include all capital improvement project requests        send copies throughout the community, to elected officials, the CIAC chairperson and to NCBG.

8. Follow up on Your Community Plan

- Update concerned community members regularly of new developments pertaining to the community plan.

- Constantly update the community plan to address newly identified capital investment needs.

- Recruit new community members to become expert leaders on the infrastructure concerns of the community.

- Track the community plan requests through the Mid-Year and Year-End Construction Reports.

9. Hold the City Accountable

Chicago's Capital Improvement Program is not accountable to the City's stakeholders and taxpayers, because the CIP is simply a plan. By having only a CIP and no annual capital budget, the City:

1. Can alter the plan without involving or informing City Council or the public, and
2. Has no method for measuring its performance at the end of the year. Both of these problems are generally addressed through an annual capital budget.

Like an operating budget, the capital budget allocates revenue and funds to specific items, in this case, capital improvement projects. In most major American cities (see Appendix E), a complete list of projects and their project costs is adopted by an elected body to become legally binding on a city's administration. Alterations during the year are made through amendment. The needs for administrative discretion and flexibility to respond to contingencies are generally provided through the annual budgeting process, with an explicit policy statement and articulated procedures to be followed in extraordinary circumstances.

At the end of the year, it is possible to measure the performance of a city with an annual capital budget, both in terms of capital expenditures and completed projects. The public, and its elected officials, can compare what was budgeted to what was accomplished.

10. Demand Progress Reports