Why Is This Important?
The City purchases, restores, builds and repairs assets and infrastructure (e.g. buildings, wetlands, trees, parks, water pipes, fire hydrants, roads) to provide community services. Best practices designed to achieve the most benefit from these assets at the lowest risk and cost to the public is a goal of asset management. Asset management is a professional discipline, like accounting or engineering, that many city employees work at every day. The City measures the cost to replace assets to calculate how much we should be investing in our assets each year. The City forecasts how much should be invested in systems over 5 to 20 years. Best practice is to invest 1% to 3% of total replacement value each year to keep assets in good condition. Calculating the gap between how much the City has available and funding needed to achieve best practice helps City leaders decide how to fund this investment, like borrowing money or using cash on hand. Every city faces the same challenge of working within a limited budget and balancing other city needs with asset management.