Commonly used terms throughout the Plan are defined below. 

Area Plans: Subsections of the City’s General Plan that address the specific urban design, open space, transportation, housing, and community facility goals of a particular neighborhood. For the purposes of the Capital Plan, Area Plans refer to those Areas of high marginal growth governed by Chapter 36 of the San Francisco Administrative Code: Balboa Park, Eastern Neighborhoods, Central SoMa, Market/Octavia, Rincon Hill, Transit Center, and Visitacion Valley.

Assessed Value: The dollar value assigned to individual real estate or other property for the purpose of levying taxes. 

Capital Project: A major construction and improvement project, including the planning and design phases. Examples include the resurfacing of a street and the construction of a new hospital, bridge, or community center. 

Capital Plan: Also referred to as the Plan. The City and County of San Francisco Capital Plan outlines all of the Capital Projects that are planned for the next 10 years. The City’s Capital Plan is updated every two years and has a 10-year horizon. Not every project in the plan has funding (see Deferred Project and Emerging Need), but the Plan aims to present a complete picture of the City’s strategy for maintaining and improving its infrastructure and key assets. The Capital Planning Program produces the Capital Plan based on department capital requests, and the Capital Planning Committee reviews and proposes the Plan to the Board of Supervisors. 

Certificates of Participation (COPs): A commonly used form of lease financing for capital improvement projects or purchases of essential equipment. COPs are loans to the city that are paid back by the revenue generated by a building or other city-owned assets. 

Community Facility District (CFD): Also known as a Mello-Roos District. A defined area such as a county, city, special district, or joint powers authority where residents vote to approve a special property tax on real estate, in addition to the normal property tax, to fund public improvements benefiting the district. The tax is often used to secure debt. 

Debt Service: The annual payment of principal and interest on the City’s bonded debt (see Municipal Bond for more information on bonded debt). Debt service can be used to describe the payments for an individual project or to provide an overall picture of the city’s bonded debts. 

Deferred Project: A project not funded in the Capital Plan either due to lack of funding or the timeline of the project falling outside of the 10-year planning cycle.  

Emerging Need: A project not funded in the Capital Plan because additional planning is needed or there is significant uncertainty around project-specific issues. Emerging needs are included in the Plan to show the City’s awareness that they may become more significant and/or defined in coming years.

Enhancement: An investment that increases an asset’s value and/or changes its use. Enhancements typically result from the passage of new laws or mandates, functional changes, or technological advancements. Examples include purchasing or constructing a new facility or park, major renovations of or additions to an existing facility, accessibility improvements to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and planting new street trees. Typically, enhancements are large-scale, multi-year, projects such as renovations, additions, or new facilities. While some project costs can be funded with pay-as-you-go sources, most enhancements require debt financing through the issuance of General Obligation bonds, Certificates of Participation, or lease revenue bonds. 

Enterprise Department: An Enterprise Department generates its own revenues from fees and charges for services and thus does not rely on the General Fund. The City has four Enterprise departments: Public Utilities Commission, San Francisco International Airport, Port of San Francisco, and the Municipal Transportation Agency.  

External Agency: An agency that is a separate, autonomous entity from the City and County of San Francisco and operates separately.

Facilities Maintenance: See Routine Maintenance.

General Fund: The largest of the City’s funds, the General Fund is a source for discretionary spending and funds many of the basic municipal services such as public safety, health and human services, and public works. Primary revenue sources for the General Fund include local taxes such as property, sales, business, and others.

General Fund Department: A City department that relies primarily or entirely on the General Fund as a revenue source to provide City services. The General Fund departments included in the Plan are: Asian Art Museum, Arts Commission, California Academy of Sciences, District Attorney’s Office, Emergency Management, Fine Arts Museum, Fire, General Services Agency, Homelessness and Supportive Housing, Human Services Agency, Juvenile Probation, Police, Public Health, Public Library, Public Works, Recreation and Parks, Sheriff, Technology, and the War Memorial and Performing Arts Center.    

General Plan: Adopted by the Planning Commission and approved by the Board of Supervisors, the General Plan is the document that serves as the foundation for all land use decisions in the City, especially around the issues of land use, circulation, housing, conservation, open space, noise and safety. It contains specific Area Plans for the planning of different City neighborhoods. 

General Obligation Bonds (G.O. Bonds): A municipal bond secured by property tax revenues. G.O. Bonds are appropriately used for the construction and/or acquisition of improvements to real property broadly available to the residents and visitors of San Francisco.

Horizontal Infrastructure: Infrastructure required to deliver basic public goods and services such as roads, sewers, water lines, bridges, transit rail, and open space, among others. 

Infrastructure: Physical elements of the city that allow it to function effectively for residents, workers, and visitors. This can include roads, bridges, sewers, water lines, transit rail, open space, hospitals, housing units, city offices, jails, and other public assets.

Job Years: Defined as one year of full-time work. For example, three people employed full-time for five years represent 15 job years.  

Lease Financing: An important source of medium- and long-term financing where the owner of an asset gives another person the right to use that asset against periodical payments. A common example would be a landlord leasing an apartment for a monthly rent. The owner of the asset is known as lessor and the user is called lessee. There are various forms of lease financing in the Plan, including Certificates of Participation.

Mello-Roos District: See Community Facility District. 

Municipal Bond: A debt obligation issued by a government entity, such as the City and County of San Francisco. When an individual buys a municipal bond, they are loaning money to the issuer – the City – in exchange for a set number of interest payments over a predetermined period. At the end of that period, the bond reaches its maturity date, and the full amount of the original investment is returned to the individual. The amount of money that the City owes as a result of selling municipal bonds is known as the City’s bonded debt. Net Assessed Value: The total assessed value of property in San Francisco, excluding property considered exempt from tax levies, such as properties owned by religious or non-profit organizations.

Pay-As-You-Go (Pay-Go): Refers to the funding of Capital Projects with current General Fund revenue on an annual basis rather than paying for projects by taking on long-term debt or using another dedicated funding source. 

The Plan: See Capital Plan. 

Renewal: An investment that preserves or extends the useful life of facilities or infrastructure. Examples of renewal projects include the repair and replacement of major building systems including the roof, exterior walls and windows, and heating and cooling systems; street resurfacing; and the repair and replacement of infrastructure in the public right-of-way, including sidewalks and street structures.

Since renewal projects tend to be smaller investments compared with investments needed to replace entire facilities, the Plan funds many of these needs through Pay-Go cash revenue sources, appropriated through the City’s annual budget process. 

Revenue Bond: A municipal bond secured by and repaid from specific revenues. Pledged revenues are often earnings from a self-supporting enterprise or utility. Typically, these revenues are associated with the asset for which the bond was originally issued, for example those issued by the Airport or Public Utilities Commission. 

Right-of-Way Infrastructure: Infrastructure constructed and maintained by the City for right-of-way purposes, which are defined as the right of public travel on certain lands. Examples include the traveled portion of public streets and alleys, as well as the border areas, which include, but not limited to, any sidewalks, curb ramps, planting strips, traffic circles, or medians.

Routine Maintenance: Also known as Facilities Maintenance. Projects that provide for the day-to-day maintenance of existing buildings and infrastructure, including labor costs. Unlike renewals and enhancements, these are annual allocations.   

Vertical Infrastructure: Facility structures such as hospitals, clinics, public safety buildings, administrative facilities, public housing units, community centers, and jails, among others. 

San Francisco’s Ten-Year Capital Plan Governance Structure 

In August 2005, concerns from city leaders, citizens, Mayor Newsom, and the Board of Supervisors culminated in Administrative Code Sections 3.20 and 3.21 requiring the City to annually develop and adopt a ten-year constrained capital expenditure plan for city-owned facilities and infrastructure. The code ensures the Plan’s relevance by requiring that all capital expenditures be reviewed in light of the adopted capital expenditure plan. 

The Capital Planning Committee (CPC) approves the Capital Plan and makes recommendations to the Board of Supervisors on all of the City’s capital expenditures. It consists of the City Administrator as chair, the President of the Board of Supervisors, the Mayor’s Finance Director, the Controller, the City Planning Director, the Public Works Director, the Airport Director, the Municipal Transportation Agency Executive Director, the Public Utilities Commission General Manager, the Recreation and Parks Department General Manager, and the Port of San Francisco Executive Director. The mission of the Capital Planning Committee is to review the proposed capital expenditure plan and to monitor the City’s ongoing compliance with the final adopted capital plan.

The departments and external agencies below are included in the current 10-Year Capital Plan. Here you can see each one's funding tables from the Capital Plan and learn more through links to their respective websites.

Capital Planning Committee

Department Staff

External Agency Staff

Prepared By

In compliance with San Francisco Administrative Code Section 3.20, I submit the Proposed City and County of San Francisco Capital Plan for Fiscal Years 2024-2033. As the guiding document for City infrastructure investments, this Plan recommends $41.4 billion for critical public health and safety facilities, affordable housing, transportation, underground infrastructure, streets, parks and cultural centers, and efforts to improve climate and seismic resilience along the waterfront and across the city over the coming decade. 

As the City moves toward economic recovery, this Plan seeks to begin reducing the backlog of deferred maintenance of our public buildings, roads, and essential infrastructure by restoring funding to pre-COVID levels. It is essential that the City find a way to make these capital investments over the next ten years to ensure that our assets remain safe for the citizens and employees who use them, and keep them from becoming prohibitively expensive to operate and maintain. The Plan also recognizes that the needs for capital investment on the horizon are increasing as we confront the challenges of climate change, seismic safety, and affordability. Finding and committing these resources will be a challenge as changing work patterns and social conditions continue to impact the City's economy and vitality.

Planning for the care and maintenance of our public assets is an essential function of government. The investments proposed in this Plan balance limited resources with our most pressing needs and will serve a vital role in shaping a City that emerges stronger from the pandemic and is resilient to future shocks. I look forward to working with the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors to enact the recommendations of this Plan. 

Carmen Chu
City Administrator

The California Academy of Sciences is an aquarium, planetarium, rainforest, and natural history museum in the heart of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Cal Academy is also a powerful voice for biodiversity research and exploration, environmental education, and sustainability across the globe.

calacademy.org

C. Glossary of Terms

Commonly used terms throughout the Plan are defined below.

Area Plans: Subsections of the City’s General Plan that address the specific urban design, open space, transportation, housing, and community facility goals of a particular neighborhood. For the purposes of the Capital Plan, Area Plans refer to those Areas of high marginal growth governed by Chapter 36 of the San Francisco Administrative Code: Balboa Park, Central SOMA, Eastern Neighborhoods, Market/Octavia, Rincon Hill, Transit Center, and Visitacion Valley.

Assessed Value: The dollar value assigned to individual real estate or other property for the purpose of levying taxes.

Capital Project: A major construction and improvement project, including the planning and design phases. Examples include the resurfacing of a street and the construction of a new hospital, bridge, or community center.

Capital Plan: Also referred to as the Plan. The City and County of San Francisco Capital Plan outlines all of the Capital Projects that are planned for the next 10 years. The City’s Capital Plan is updated every two years and has a 10-year horizon. Not every project in the plan has funding (see Deferred Project and Emerging Need), but the Plan aims to present a complete picture of the City’s strategy for maintaining and improving its infrastructure and key assets. The Capital Planning Program produces the Capital Plan based on department capital requests, and the Capital Planning Committee reviews and proposes the Plan to the Board of Supervisors.

Certificates of Participation (COPs): A commonly used form of lease financing for capital improvement projects or purchases of essential equipment. COPs are loans to the city that are paid back by the revenue generated by a building or other city-owned assets.

Community Facility District (CFD): Also known as a Mello-Roos District. A defined area such as a county, city, special district, or joint powers authority where residents vote to approve a special property tax on real estate, in addition to the normal property tax, to fund public improvements benefiting the district. The tax is often used to secure debt.

Debt Service: The annual payment of principal and interest on the City’s bonded debt (see Municipal Bond for more information on bonded debt). Debt service can be used to describe the payments for an individual project or to provide an overall picture of the city’s bonded debts.

Deferred Project: A project not funded in the Capital Plan either due to lack of funding or the timeline of the project falling outside of the 10-year planning cycle.

Emerging Need: A project not funded in the Capital Plan because additional planning is needed or there is significant uncertainty around project-specific issues. Emerging needs are included in the Plan to show the City’s awareness that they may become more significant and/or defined in coming years.

Enhancement: An investment that increases an asset’s value and/or changes its use. Enhancements typically result from the passage of new laws or mandates, functional changes, or technological advancements. Examples include purchasing or constructing a new facility or park, major renovations of or additions to an existing facility, accessibility improvements to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and planting new street trees. Typically, enhancements are large-scale, multi-year, projects such as renovations, additions, or new facilities. While some project costs can be funded with pay-as-you-go sources, most enhancements require debt financing through the issuance of General Obligation bonds, Certificates of Participation, or lease revenue bonds.

Enterprise Department: An Enterprise Department generates its own revenues from fees and charges for services and thus does not rely on the General Fund. The City has four Enterprise departments: Public Utilities Commission, San Francisco International Airport, Port of San Francisco, and the Municipal Transportation Agency.

External Agency: An agency that is a separate, autonomous entity from the City and County of San Francisco and operates separately.

Facilities Maintenance:
See Routine Maintenance.

General Fund: The largest of the City’s funds, the General Fund is a source for discretionary spending and funds many of the basic municipal services such as public safety, health and human services, and public works. Primary revenue sources for the General Fund include local taxes such as property, sales, business, and others.

General Fund Department: A City department that relies primarily or entirely on the General Fund as a revenue source to provide City services. The General Fund departments included in the Plan are: Asian Art Museum, Arts Commission, California Academy of Sciences, District Attorney’s Office, Emergency Management, Fine Arts Museum, Fire, General Services Agency, Homelessness and Supportive Housing, Human Services Agency, Juvenile Probation, Police, Public Health, Public Library, Public Works, Recreation and Parks, Sheriff, Technology, and the War Memorial and Performing Arts Center.

General Plan: Adopted by the Planning Commission and approved by the Board of Supervisors, the General Plan is the document that serves as the foundation for all land use decisions in the City, especially around the issues of land use, circulation, housing, conservation, open space, noise and safety. It contains specific Area Plans for the planning of different City neighborhoods.

General Obligation Bonds (G.O. Bonds): A municipal bond secured by property tax revenues. G.O. Bonds are appropriately used for the construction and/or acquisition of improvements to real property broadly available to the residents and visitors of San Francisco.

Horizontal Infrastructure: Infrastructure required to deliver basic public goods and services such as roads, sewers, water lines, bridges, transit rail, and open space, among others.

Infrastructure: Physical elements of the city that allow it to function effectively for residents, workers, and visitors. This can include roads, bridges, sewers, water lines, transit rail, open space, hospitals, housing units, city offices, jails, and other public assets.

Job Years: Defined as one year of full-time work. For example, three people employed full-time for five years represent 15 job years.

Lease Financing: An important source of medium- and long-term financing where the owner of an asset gives another person the right to use that asset against periodical payments. A common example would be a landlord leasing an apartment for a monthly rent. The owner of the asset is known as lessor and the user is called lessee. There are various forms of lease financing in the Plan, including Certificates of Participation.

Mello-Roos District: See Community Facility District.

Municipal Bond: A debt obligation issued by a government entity, such as the City and County of San Francisco. When an individual buys a municipal bond, they are loaning money to the issuer – the City – in exchange for a set number of interest payments over a predetermined period. At the end of that period, the bond reaches its maturity date, and the full amount of the original investment is returned to the individual. The amount of money that the City owes as a result of selling municipal bonds is known as the City’s bonded debt. Net Assessed Value: The total assessed value of property in San Francisco, excluding property considered exempt from tax levies, such as properties owned by religious or non-profit organizations.

Pay-As-You-Go (Pay-Go): Refers to the funding of Capital Projects with current General Fund revenue on an annual basis rather than paying for projects by taking on long-term debt or using another dedicated funding source.

The Plan: See Capital Plan.

Renewal: An investment that preserves or extends the useful life of facilities or infrastructure. Examples of renewal projects include the repair and replacement of major building systems including the roof, exterior walls and windows, and heating and cooling systems; street resurfacing; and the repair and replacement of infrastructure in the public right-of-way, including sidewalks and street structures.

Since renewal projects tend to be smaller investments compared with investments needed to replace entire facilities, the Plan funds many of these needs through Pay-Go cash revenue sources, appropriated through the City’s annual budget process.

Revenue Bond: A municipal bond secured by and repaid from specific revenues. Pledged revenues are often earnings from a self-supporting enterprise or utility. Typically, these revenues are associated with the asset for which the bond was originally issued, for example those issued by the Airport or Public Utilities Commission.

Right-of-Way Infrastructure: Infrastructure constructed and maintained by the City for right-of-way purposes, which are defined as the right of public travel on certain lands. Examples include the traveled portion of public streets and alleys, as well as the border areas, which include, but not limited to, any sidewalks, curb ramps, planting strips, traffic circles, or medians.

Routine Maintenance: Also known as Facilities Maintenance. Projects that provide for the day-to-day maintenance of existing buildings and infrastructure, including labor costs. Unlike renewals and enhancements, these are
annual allocations.

Vertical Infrastructure: Facility structures such as hospitals, clinics, public safety buildings, administrative facilities, public housing units, community centers, and jails, among others.

The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco – Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture enables a diverse, global audience to discover the distinctive materials, aesthetics, and intellectual achievements of Asian art and cultures, and serves as a bridge of understanding between Asia and the United States and amongst the diverse cultures of Asia.

asianart.org

By March 1 of each odd-numbered year, beginning with March 1, 2013, the City Administrator shall submit to the Mayor and Board of Supervisors a ten-year capital expenditure plan which shall include an assessment of the City’s capital infrastructure needs, investments required to meet the needs identified through this assessment, and a plan of finance to fund these investments. By May 1 of the same year, the Mayor and Board of Supervisors shall review, update, amend, and adopt by resolution the ten-year capital expenditure plan. The Mayor and Board of Supervisors may update the plan as necessary and appropriate to reflect the City’s priorities, resources, and requirements. 

The capital expenditure plan shall include all recommended capital project investments for each year of the plan. The plan shall incorporate all major planned investments to maintain, repair, and improve the condition of the City’s capital assets, including but not limited to city streets, sidewalks, parks, and rights-of-way; public transit infrastructure; airport and port; water, sewer, and power utilities; and all City-owned facilities. 

The capital expenditure plan shall include a plan of finance for all recommended investments, including proposed uses of General and Enterprise Funds to be spent to meet these requirements. Additionally, the plan shall recommend the use and timing of long-term debt to fund planned capital expenditures, including General Obligation bond measures. 

The capital expenditure plan shall include a summary of operating costs and impacts on City operations that are projected to result from capital investments recommended in the plan. This operations review shall include expected changes in the cost and quality of City service delivery. 

The plan shall also include a summary and description of projects deferred from the ten-year capital expenditure plan given non-availability of funding necessary to meet assessed capital needs. (Added by Ord. 216-05, File No. 050920, App. 8/19/2005; amended by Ord. 40-06, File No. 060078, App. 3/10/2006; Ord. 222-11, File No. 111001, App. 11/15/2011, Eff. 12/15/2011) (Former Sec. 3.20 added by Ord. 223-97, App. 6/6/97; amended by Ord. 55-98, App. 2/20/98; repealed by Ord. 216-05)  

Services Area Facility Map