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I examine three recent cases where local governments changed their processes for selecting capital projects. The central question is whether these changes institutionalized a more “strategic” outlook in capital improvement planning and budgeting for these jurisdictions? The findings suggest that local governments can set capital priorities strategically, but that the process of implementing those reforms must be adaptable to changing political circumstances. These findings add to the limited literature on the political, administrative, and other challenges that local governments must confront when reforming their capital improvement planning and budgeting processes.

Strategic planning in all sectors of government is currently experiencing greater use. Strategic planning in the federal government, for example, is now mandated and the emphasis is on “managing for results” (Roberts, 2000). At the same time, capital budgeting in all sectors of government is also receiving greater attention because of the recognition of greater need for attention to funding infrastructure. In this study, the relationship between the municipal strategic plan and the capital budget and their effect on financial performance is examined. Based on the analysis, the strategic plan, when connected to the capital budget, was found to have a statistically significant effect on selected aspects of municipal financial performance. The findings for practitioners indicate that strategic planning and capital budgeting are a major influence on financial performance and that the combination of capital budgeting and strategic planning constitutes a strategic decision-making process.

As real estate departments and workplace organisations devote more attention to strategic planning, most of the work has focused on improving performance metrics and developing dashboards to communicate this information clearly and concisely. Yet these steps will take these organisations only part of the way. Once they have this information, they need to devote more time to developing strategies and plans. This review examines one of these activities ‐ developing high‐level occupancy plans. Representatives of the strategy and planning groups at ten leading corporations and the occupancy planning experts at seven service providers and system developers were interviewed for this survey. It was found that most firms continue to complete high‐level occupancy plans with tedious and time‐consuming data‐collection processes and spreadsheet analyses. These organisations could improve efficiency and the success of their plans in two ways: better analysis approaches and better data collection and organisation. This review summarises the best practices identified in these areas.

Historically, citizen input into the capital budgeting planning and project selection process has been sporadic and often limited to the most politically-attentive, “connected” individuals and groups. The near-sightedness of such an approach has become apparent as the public’s cynicism toward government has intensified, along with its reticence to support bond referenda, and its propensity to file equity-oriented lawsuits criticizing capital project decisions. To combat these problems, local governments across the U.S. are broadening constituent involvement in their capital budget process, especially at the front-end where possible projects are identified and selected for inclusion in the capital improvement plan. This article examines the four major approaches that are being utilized: decentralizing public hearings; using community-wide public opinion surveys to gauge public support for various projects and revenue-raising options; expanding citizen access and input to, and feedback from, government interactive data bases; and creating more formalized roles for citizens on capital budget planning committees. Each of these approaches has its own assets and liabilities which are delineated.

Adoption of a separate capital budget in local governments receives little attention in the literature. It is important to look at various capital budgeting practices in local governments since a separate capital budget as different budget format and structure affects budgetary decisions, thus leading to different levels of investment in public infrastructure. This paper examines factors that facilitate or impede adoption of a separate capital budget by using time series data. Results show that local governments are more likely to adopt a separate capital budget in order to reflect local demands such as growth rate in capital spending.