The mayor’s office presented a plan to centralize the city’s capital planning and to use a published equity index to prioritize infrastructure investments, officials said at a committee briefing.

Sir Gandhi of the mayor’s administrative office, who identified himself as part of the city’s equity team, said the measure “is a citywide index that uses 26 indicators” and that the index is scored numerically from 0 to 100. He said sites scoring 60 or higher will be considered for investment and that sites scoring 80 or above are “very high need.”

John Thompson, introduced as the director of capital infrastructure for the mayor’s office, described Executive Directive 9 (ED 9) as a multi-year transformation of how the city plans and manages infrastructure. Thompson said the directive has established a capital-planning committee that has met nine times and that the committee’s materials are public through the Department of Public Works.

Thompson and other staff framed the CIP as a way to coordinate departments, reduce fragmentation and identify where limited maintenance and capital dollars will have the most impact. They cited deferred-maintenance examples, including a historic pool that remained closed because the facility’s infrastructure failed, and said a shared asset-management system will help staff respond faster and provide clearer reporting.

Presenters said the plan will integrate OpenCAD with 311 and other work-order systems so requests and work orders become digital, trackable items. “When they complete that order of work, it goes to 311 and closes the work order automatically,” a presenter said in the briefing.

Officials described seven proposed prioritization criteria — including safety, sanitation, accessibility, equity, facility development, sustainability and resilience — and said the scoring composition may vary by project type. Presenters also said they plan to create a public dashboard so constituents can view projects by district, subscribe for updates and access links to project pages.

The presentation included target review dates stated in the meeting transcript as “February 20 26” for a report review and “December 20 26” for a full CIP presentation; presenters asked the council for feedback during the development process. The administration also cautioned that technical details, contracts and other sensitive information will not be public.

The session opened with public commenters sharply critical of the capital process and the administration; presenters continued with the briefing after the comment period and asked council members for their input and questions. The committee did not adopt any votes or motions during the recorded presentation.

Next steps, as described in the briefing, include continued committee meetings, public review of the draft report on the date stated in the meeting and a full presentation of the CIP later in the year as noted by staff.