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Pleasanton has about $124 million in infrastructure classified as high risk, including about $14.3 million in assets that are in poor or failing condition and will need to be repaired or replaced in the next one to three years.
During last week’s Pleasanton City Council meeting, staff reviewed the latest update on the city’s first-ever Asset Management Plan, a document that took inventory of all the city’s assets and assessed their lifespans. The document is meant to guide staff in the overall planning and management of city infrastructure, replacement of assets and the development of the city’s next 10-year Capital Improvement Program, which plans out and budgets those sorts of projects.
The $124 million estimate, while hefty, came as a positive surprise for many of the council members, as a 10-year infrastructure plan first presented in March 2023 pointed to a $900 million infrastructure gap.
Councilmember Matt Gaidos said the latest update painted a “rosier picture” in light of the past conversations surrounding assets and infrastructure.
“I appreciate the work that was done here,” Gaidos said. “I think it gives me a little bit of a sigh of relief … considering how at-risk maybe the public thought we were or the council thought we were based on previous communications.”
Staff will return at a later date to present a list of repair and replacement projects that will be prioritized based on the assets’ condition and how crucial they are to maintaining Pleasanton’s quality of life.
“Taking care of what we have is critical,” Mayor Jack Balch said during the Oct. 6 meeting.
“Our community will be able to see how we develop the (Capital Improvement Program) budget from this asset management plan work and track it,” Balch added. “You’ll be able to see that over time as we budget and see progress.”
The city began developing the Asset Management Plan in 2024.
Public Works Director Siew-Chin Yeong said staff first conducted a survey and discovery phase to understand the extent of the assets the city owns, the gaps in asset data and what the management plan would look like once enacted.
Over the last two years, the city worked with Kayuga Solution, an infrastructure asset management consulting firm, on a $1 million project to develop the plan. This second phase involved taking inventory of the city’s nearly 206,000 assets and their conditions, including identifying assets that need immediate attention. That information was presented to the council in December.
“The effort provided better data for staff to identify immediate needs, prioritizing assets based on criticality of the asset,” Yeong said. “Most importantly, phase two established a data foundation that staff can use to plan and program for the next 10-year (Capital Improvement Program).”
Last week, Yeong presented the results of the third phase, showing how staff took all the data they collected and how they plan to use it to review and predict future investment needs.
“The data allows staff to identify the projected (Capital Improvement Program) funding needs for the 10 years, identify the peak and the low point of the needs, allowing staff to plan and seek funding years ahead before the asset reaches critical state where emergency replacement takes place that could cause an unexpected burden to the city,” Yeong said.
In addition to the $124 million in assets categorized as high risk, Yeong said there are about $290 million in assets that fall into the medium-risk category and $28 million worth that are in poor or failed condition, representing about 1% of the total assets.
She said $80 million worth of assets are in fair condition, which represents 3% of the total assets. However, about $61 million of those assets are considered high risk despite being in fair condition, meaning they should be considered for repair or replacement within the next three to 10 years.
“Assets that are in poor/fail condition are assets that need immediate attention and programming if the city wishes to continue keeping and operating the asset,” Yeong said. “Assets in fair condition are assets that still have some remaining life in the asset. Although the assets are not in immediate need for funding, these groups of assets may become (in) poor or fail condition within the next 10 years.”
“A moderate risk and low-risk asset does not mean they are not important to the city,” Yeong added. “It just means that these assets have less impact to the functionality and operation ability of a city to provide quality service to the community and residents to maintain the current standard of living and quality of life.”
Yeong said while the data shows the need is higher than the funding available for the city’s Capital Improvement Program over the next 10 years, addressing the issues is not unattainable — it’s just going to take some planning.
“With a structured, streamlined (Capital Improvement Program) planning approach, combined with the CIP prioritization strategy, the city will be able to maximize the impact on risk reduction while increasing service reliability within available funding,” Yeong said.
The first step, Yeong said, is developing a focused list of assets that the city can manageably fit into its Capital Improvement Program target budget within the next 10 years. She said the city will use a Capital Improvement Program prioritization scoring approach, using data from the Asset Management Plan, to rank projects from highest to lowest and that those ranked highest priority will be programmed first, while lower score projects will be programmed based on available funding.
Once the projects are prioritized by the council, Yeong said staff will identify available funds and create a funded project list to present to the council every fiscal year for the next Capital Improvement Program cycle. Those projects will further be reviewed based on funding limits as time goes on.
An unfunded project list will also be created each fiscal year. As those assets will also be high risk, Yeong said, the city will have to continually evaluate the consequences of deferring Capital Improvement Program replacement and identify the minimum repair and replacement costs needed to extend the asset’s service life while staff look for other funding sources.
She said staff will work on developing the lists and presenting them to the council during the budget and Capital Improvement Program development discussions next March. A final Capital Improvement Program is expected to come before the council for a vote next May.
Assistant City Manager Alexa Jeffress told the council last week that the previous $900 million estimate was more of a high-level precursor to the Asset Management Plan that included both enterprise and non-enterprise general funded assets.
“We still do have significant funding gaps,” Jeffress said. “But now we have this data to make more informed decisions about how we allocate the resources that we do have within these constraints to really focus this limited funding so it can have the biggest impact.”
Councilmember Julie Testa said she felt really good about the city’s infrastructure being in generally good condition because she had predicted a negative report from the Asset Management Plan.
“One percent is in poor and failed condition. I celebrate that,” Testa said. “We don’t celebrate that we know we have significant funding gaps, and having this report will help us to identify the priorities and stay on top of those greatest needs with funding that is available.”
