D.C. Mun. Regs. tit. 10-A, § 229
229.1 Investing in adequate, well-maintained public facilities and infrastructure that meet the needs of a growing city will help implement the Comprehensive Plan and fulfill our vision of an inclusive city. Public facilities and infrastructure offer vital services to residents, businesses and visitors. They shape and enhance the public realm; provide affordable housing; contribute to health, wellness, and quality of life; support economic growth; and advance the District as a smart, sustainable, and resilient city.
229.2 Public facility and infrastructure investments should address three priorities: reach and maintain a state of good repair; add capacity necessary to meet the needs of growth; and address the forces driving change to successfully respond to future opportunities and challenges. Capital investments that incorporate sustainable, resilient, and high-quality design features and respond to emerging technologies make the District a more attractive, efficient place to live and work, and will pay future dividends by reducing costs to public health and the environment. These investments ensure that the city's transportation, housing at various income levels, communications, energy, water, and wastewater systems adequately serve the needs of the District, and that education, public-safety, and health and wellness facilities effectively and efficiently deliver high-quality services to residents, workers and visitors. The District must prioritize public investment in security, trauma, and violence prevention in the context of a public health crisis.
229.3 The District must use its resources and assets strategically to advance the well-being of all residents. When a development project depends on public subsidies, surplus land, and/or entitlements such as Zoning Map or Future Land Use Map amendments, Planned Unit Developments, variances, tax increment financing, and tax abatements, the District should leverage the enhanced value of the land that results. The enhanced value shall meet the equity needs of DC's neighborhoods in the form of deeply affordable housing and other priorities detailed in the Comprehensive Plan. The leverage can take the form of deeply affordable housing units in excess of the Inclusionary Zoning requirements, special assessment cash contributions or increased tax rates, or other tools supported by the Comprehensive Plan. As an example, transit infrastructure investments, such as a new station, should be aligned with land use policies that support uses, densities, and connections that support transit-oriented development. The primary goal of this equity-leveraging effort is to ensure that land-use policies and actions align with the public investment and that District residents' interests are balanced with the developers' interests.
229.4 Public and private infrastructure and facilities within in the District include:
and 70,000 streetlights;
229.5 Since the adoption of the 2006 Comprehensive Plan, the District and other entities undertook a variety of important facility and infrastructure investments to improve the quality of life for District residents. These investments have largely replaced aging infrastructure, improved existing facilities, or addressed environmental problems; however, few investments have actually expanded capacity to meet the city's growing needs. Between 2006 and 2016, the city rehabilitated existing infrastructure such as schools, transit and electrical networks that were largely developed prior to the 1980's. The city benefitted from the increasing tax revenues from growth while not experiencing the costs of expanding infrastructure to the same degree. The same cannot be said going forward. Increasingly, further population and job growth will require investments in new capacity.
229.6 The Forecast of D.C. Residents by Age in Figure 2.11 provides an example of increased demand: the District can expect more than 21,000 additional school-age children and another 7,000 infants and toddlers by 2025. D.C. Public Schools has capacity, but not necessarily in the neighborhoods expected to have the greatest growth in children. Other public and private infrastructure has investment needs to address both deferred maintenance and upgrade out-of-date facilities before investments can be made to expand capacity. The Metro transportation system, facilities for municipal fleets, and the electrical grid are only a few examples of where new investments are necessary to meet the growing needs of the city.
229.7 Forecasted growth will occur with competing priorities, rising costs, uncertain federal resources, and limited borrowing capacity. This will challenge the District to seek new ways of delivering the underlying structural supports that serve the residents and businesses of the city. Adding to the complexity, the District must function as a city, county, and a state, along with serving as the nation's capital and the seat of the federal government. These are unique challenges not experienced by any other municipality in our nation.
229.8 The District's Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) is the official plan for making improvements to public facilities and infrastructure over a six-year horizon. The 2006 Comprehensive Plan strengthened the linkage between the Plan and the CIP. Proposed projects are now evaluated for consistency with the Comprehensive Plan and other District policies and priorities. As a result, the Comprehensive Plan became a guide for capital investments, leading to greater coordination across agencies doing public facilities planning; and the development of review criteria for a more objective and transparent process.
229.9 Recognizing the difficulty of developing an appropriate capital plan to support the District's needs, within the resources available, the District has implemented a new modeling tool called the Capital Asset Replacement Scheduling System (CARSS). The tool provides a set of mechanisms and models that: enable the District to inventory and track all assets; uses asset condition assessments to determine the needs and timing for replacement; provide a tool to then prioritize and rank the associated capital projects, both new and maintenance projects; and then determine the funding gap and assess the impact on out-year budgets from insufficient capital budget.
229.10 The current FY 2017-2022 CI P allocates approximately $6.3 billion to a wide range of capital projects in the District, including maintenance, replacement, or upgrade of vehicular fleets for police, fire, and emergency medical services; street, sidewalks, and alley infrastructure; and public buildings and facilities, such as schools, recreation centers, parks, health and wellness facilities, and police, fire, and government administration buildings.
229.11 The District also uses a 15-year Long-Range Capital Financial Plan to estimate the replacement needs of aging assets, evaluate how population growth will require expansion of existing infrastructure and facilities, and determine the District's fiscal capacity to fund these projects. This long-range plan was conducted in 2016 and included an analysis that estimated a capital budget shortfall of approximately $4.2 billion through 2022. This gap includes unfunded new capital projects needed to support the growing population and unfunded capital maintenance of existing assets.
229.12 Perhaps the most significant challenge the District faces to meet the needs of growth is an already relatively high debt per capita. District law requires that annual debt service be no more than 12 percent of general fund expenditures. This means the city has limited capacity to borrow funds for new long-term investments. Going forward, the District must consider innovative ways to deliver and finance infrastructure, perhaps learning from other parts of the country experiencing rapid growth similar to that of the District.
229.13 The District has already begun the process. The Long-Range Capital Financial Plan represents a more rigorous and efficient analysis of capital needs and fiscal capacity. On large sites with significant infrastructure needs, such as the Wharf along the Southwest Waterfront, the District is using tools like tax increment financing or payments in lieu of taxes to fund the needed infrastructure for the projects. The District recently created an Office of Public Private Partnerships, which is charged with building collaborations between the private sector and District government to design, build, fund, operate, and/or maintain key infrastructure and facility projects. The Office is exploring ideas such as co-location of private sector uses on District-owned land and social-impact bonds to fund new local public facilities. All are important steps, but more is needed to fully invest in an inclusive city.
SOURCE: District of Columbia Comprehensive Plan Act of 1984, effective April 10, 1984 (D.C. Law 5-76; 31 DCR 1049 (March 9, 1984)); as amended by District of Columbia Comprehensive Plan Act of 1984 Land Use Element Amendment Act of 1984, effective March 16, 1985 (D.C. Law 5-187; 32 DCR 873 (February 15, 1985)); as amended by District of Columbia Comprehensive Plan Amendments Act of 1989, effective May 23, 1990 (D.C. Law 8-129; 37 DCR 55 (January 5, 1990)); as amended by District of Columbia Comprehensive Plan Amendments Act of 1989 NCPC-Recommended Amendments, and Closing of Public Alleys in Square 669, S.O. 88-452, Act of 1990, effective May 23, 1990 (D.C. Law 8-132; 37 DCR 2213 (April 6, 1990)); as amended by District Government Land Use Temporary Amendment Act of 1994, effective October 1, 1994 (D.C. Law 10-190; 41 DCR 5360 (August 12, 1994)); as amended by Comprehensive Plan Amendments Act of 1994, effective October 6, 1994 (D.C. Law 10-193; 41 DCR 5536 (August 19, 1994)); as amended by District of Columbia Comprehensive Plan Act of 1984 Land Use Amendment Act of 1994, effective March 21, 1995 (D.C. Law 10-235; 42 DCR 30 (January 6, 1995)); as amended by Technical Amendments Act of 1996 effective April 18, 1996 (D.C. Law 11-110; 43 DCR 530 (February 9, 1996)); as amended by Second Technical Amendments Act of 1996 effective April 9, 1997 (D.C. Law 11-255; 44 DCR 1271 (March 7, 1997)); as amended by Comprehensive Plan Amendment Act of 1998, effective April 27, 1999 (D.C. Law 12-275; 46 DCR 1441 (February 19, 1999)); as amended by Technical Amendments Act of 1999, effective April 12, 2000 (D.C. Law 13-91; 47 DCR 520 (January 28, 2000)); as amended by Comprehensive Plan Amendment Act of 2006, effective March 8, 2007 (D.C. Law 16-300; 54 DCR 924 (February 2, 2007)); as amended by Technical Amendments Act of 2008, effective March 25, 2009 (D.C. Law 17-353; 56 DCR 1117 (February 6, 2009)); as amended by Comprehensive Plan Amendment Act of 2010, effective April 8, 2011 (D.C. Law 18-361; 58 DCR 908 (February 4, 2011)); as amended by Comprehensive Plan Framework Amendment Act of 2019, effective August 27, 2020 (D.C. Law 23-127; 67 DCR 001360 (February 14, 2020)).