Capital planning hearing.

Angel, Jamie.

Time and

that's

a

question.

Where did Tara results?

Oh, she's on SI.

We'll begin the hearing.

Okay.

Good afternoon, Chairman Daly, and members of the Finance Committee.

I

am Angela Manning Hardeman, Cook County Chief Financial Officer, and I'm here today to present the FY27 capital budget.

As you may already know, the county reviews its capital programming needs each year as part of the budget process.

This reevaluation includes capital improvements for facilities, capital equipment purchases, and transportation and highway planning.

As part of this, the county considers its ability to issue new debt for capital expenditures for or fund smaller projects to our operating budget.

This process allows for the identification, review, planning, and budgeting of some exciting and important capital investments.

The goal here today is to provide a complete look at Cook County's capital needs and ongoing efforts.

This is an important part of our long-term fiscal planning, including projecting future debt service requirements.

This also helps us better plan our work on public facilities, strategic renovations, and upgrades of county assets.

Today I'm joined by Chief Jamie Myers from our Bureau of Asset Management, Acting Superintendent Tara Orban from Highways and Transportation, and Chief Information Officer Tom Lynch from the Bureau of Technology, as well as our budget director, Kanako Ishida Musselwhite.

I will walk you through the capital budget overview before handing it off to them to provide a more detailed look at the exciting work we're doing in Cook County.

So quick agenda.

As I mentioned, I'll do the capital overview.

Capital improvement projects will be done by Jamie.

Transportation and Highway Projects will be presented by Tara, and capital equipment projects will be presented by Tom Lynch.

Next slide, please.

Similar to last year, the six policy pillars of Cook County's policy roadmap are the foundation of the FY27 capital budget.

Using the policy framework improves outcomes for residents and requires close coordination and collaboration with separately elected officials and other partners.

Next slide.

Next slide, please.7 in capital equipment projects, and $180 million in transportation and highway projects.

The pie chart represents funding sources of the county's capital projects.

57.3% of the projects are funded by debt proceeds.

Our second largest source of funding are highway improvement funds, which represents 30.8% of our funding for capital projects.

In July, the county received two credit upgrades from FITCH, raising our GO and sales tax revenue bond ratings from A to A plus.

The

county's debt management strategy has resulted in high investment grade bond ratings and lower borrowing costs for the county.

Next slide.

This chart depicts the county's current debt service profile and future funded capital program.

The black line represents the county's annual debt service growth financial policy that is aligned with the Federal Reserve's long-term inflation target of 2% and capped at $400 million in debt service.

The rat line represents the county long-term debt amortization strategy that ensures we are facilitating a future state where we can issue bonds using a level debt service structure.

To further this objective, the county seeks to fund capital equipment through pay as you go means.

So that's grants, that's the infrastructure and equipment fund and other special purpose funds to reduce reliance on budgeted funds.

And with that, I will turn the slides over to Jamie to talk about the capital improvement program.

Thank you, Angela.

Jamie Myers, Bureau Chief, Bureau of Asset Management.

Good afternoon.

So not a lot has changed within the Bureau.

We're primarily responsible for the capital improvement program as it runs through the Department of Capital Planning and Policy.

We use the Cook County Policy Roadmap as the foundation for making our decisions as we make different investments in improving our facilities.

We also use the real estate strategic realignment plan.

This was a study done back in 2013 when President commissioned by President Preckwinkle to take a look at all of our facilities, determine what our need is, what the conditions of our facilities are, and where we should be focused focusing our investments.

Like I said, that still serves as the foundation.

We've continued to gather additional information, including additional facilities condition assessments, as we continually assess the deferred maintenance, the needs of all of our user user agencies, and the policies in the policy roadmap.

So the capital plan development begins early in the year, and we have over the years we've developed more and more information that we use in making those decisions on how we put this capital plan together.

Ultimately, we're focused on life safety, deferred maintenance, and user needs, but we also take into account other items that we have, including utility costs, long-term electricity or natural gas supply, the facility condition assessments I talked about before, the number of maintenance tickets that are open, long-term strategy, whether or not we need additional space, etc.

We're starting to take all of that information into account when we start to make decisions putting together the capital development plan.

Next slide, please.

So

another area that our Bureau is responsible for is the Green Buildings program.