BNIA Provides City with Analysis of Its Capital Improvements, with Eye Toward Equity
September 16, 2019
Contact: Office of Government and Public Affairs
Phone: 410.837.5739
A report developed jointly by the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance-Jacob France Institute at the University of Baltimore and the Baltimore Department of Planning provides a detailed analysis of the city's billion-dollar Capital Improvement Program (CIP), with the goal of assessing the level of equity of the program in terms of factors such as race and income. With these results in hand, the city will develop a more equitable strategy of distribution of CIP funding across city neighborhoods.
"The CIP is one of the most important ways through which the City of Baltimore invests in its physical future," the Department of Planning said in a release about the new report. "Typically, these are investments in physical infrastructure that include road improvements, public buildings, and parks. This report includes analysis of all projects from FY14-20 where a location can be identified, which ranges from between 20 percent to 60 percent of the total funds in the CIP."
The report finds that between FY14 and FY20, the Community Statistical Areas labeled Penn North/Reservoir Hill, Downtown/Seton Hill and Southeastern Baltimore received the highest total per capital allocations. The community with the highest per capita CIP allocation of local projects was Harbor East/Little Italy, according to the Department of Planning.
Establishing equity in CIP funding decisions is "an ongoing effort, and our assessments and policy responses must and will evolve and advance over time," said Baltimore Mayor Jack Young. "I challenge all City agencies to continue to push for the best assessments and use that information to ensure that the needs and aspirations of all Baltimoreans are valued in the policies, programs, and budgets that we enact as a City."
Learn more about BNIA-JFI.