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How Capital Budgeting Helped a Sick City: Thirty Years of Capital Improvement Planning in Cleveland
Author(s) -
Hoffmann Susan,
Krumholz Norman,
O’Brien Kevin
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
public budgeting and finance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.694
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1540-5850
pISSN - 0275-1100
DOI - 10.1111/0275-1100.00002
Subject(s) - fell , capital (architecture) , obligation , debt , plan (archaeology) , finance , business , administration (probate law) , capital budgeting , public infrastructure , economics , political science , law , history , geography , cartography , archaeology
During the 1970s, Cleveland’s capital improvement plan (CIP) was scorned as a bad joke, and the city’s roads, bridges, and public buildings fell into disrepair. The city’s default on its fiscal obligation in 1978 seemed to cap the city’s infrastructure problem; there was no comprehensive strategy for capital spending and in a bankrupt city, no money to spend in any event. Yet, during the 1980s, with support from the administration, the business community, and the innovations of a small group of dedicated urban planners, the CIP was restructured and hundreds of millions were systematically invested in public infrastructure. By the 1990s, most of the innovative changes of the 1980s seemed to be institutionalized, but there were ominous clouds on the horizon.