4 credits, usually offered in the Autumn quarter
Introduction
This course is focused on infrastructure planning and finance and, more generally, on the relationship between planning and budgeting. The course is divided into three parts.
The course begins with an introduction to several infrastructure systems: water and sewer services, solid waste disposal, transportation, and fire services. In this segment of the course, infrastructure planning is distinguished from and related to budgeting and finance. We explore basic concepts, legal frameworks, politics, and processes used in the systems studied, including techniques in infrastructure planning aimed at estimating demand and predicting the effects of infrastructure projects on land use.
The second part is focused on local government finance. We study government’s conceptual economic framework, budgeting approaches, and taxes such as property tax, sales tax, and user fees. We examine arguments for and examples of outcome-based, client-oriented programming and budgeting. The features of local finance are introduced with reference to the economic theories with which they are associated, including neoclassical, public goods, club goods, game theory, and transaction costs.
Infrastructure finance is the subject of the final part of the course. We examine the relationship between sources of funds and their uses for infrastructure. Our study includes all common forms of finance, such as pay-as-you-go, user fees, special districts, public and private debt, impact fees, exactions, and tax increment finance. We devote considerable attention to the equity and distributional issues that arise from alternative forms of finance. We study the assessment and prioritization of infrastructure investments in changing economic climates, the development of Capital Improvement Programs (aka Capital Investment Plans), and the implications of alternative forms of project and program delivery, such as public-private partnerships, design-build contracts, and privatization.