Infrastructure & Asset Management
City of Somerville FY21 Budget
Mission Statement
The Department of Infrastructure and Asset Management (IAM), through Capital Projects for buildings and Engineering for utilities, and in close collaboration with DPW, OSPCD, and Water & Sewer, develops and implements a comprehensive plan to effectively maintain, modernize, and replace Somerville’s full range of horizontal and vertical infrastructure assets. While IAM seeks to optimize the City’s capital investments through technical evaluation of operations costs against capital improvements, the broader goal of the department is to establish and utilize evaluation criteria, in consultation with virtually every other City department, by which options are rated and projects are prioritized. IAM also seeks to identify and evaluate alternative forms of funding with the objective of minimizing overall costs to taxpayers and water and sewer ratepayers.
Changes from FY20
None of the IAM staff are part of collective bargaining; therefore, there are no salary adjustments to IAM Personal Services.
To reflect departmental organization and reporting structures, the Project Assistant position is being moved from IAM administration to the Capital Projects Division. Consequently, while the IAM PS budget appears to be reduced, there is no actual change to the overall Departmental budget.
For FY20 when IAM was created by combining Capital Projects and Engineering, the Ordinary Maintenance budgets for routine expenses (e.g., training, office supplies, furniture, equipment, etc.) remained at the Division level. To improve operational efficiency, most of those lines are being consolidated at the IAM Department level for FY21. Those lines are level-funded with the exception of a complete cut to out-of-state travel and conferences resulting in a modest net reduction in OM for IAM.
It should be noted that there is an apparent increase in Engineering OM; however, this is due to the roadway markings maintenance function and budget line being moved from the Parking Department to IAM Engineering. That line is being level-funded from FY20 to FY21 resulting in no net change to the overall City budget.