Park operations and construction use separate budgets.

For each year, we convert capital expenditure to 2024 dollars using annual-average U.S. CPI-U. We add those adjusted amounts, then divide by the sum of each year’s population. One resident counted for one year is one resident-year. This accounts for population growth without dividing historical spending by today’s larger population.

Population is the April 1 BEBR estimate within each fiscal year; 2020 uses the Census count. Calendar-year CPI approximates the October–September fiscal year’s purchasing power. It is a general inflation adjustment, not a local construction-cost index.

Coverage is the General Fund Parks and Recreation capital totals and explicitly named Downtown CRA park expenditures in the posted books’ historical actual columns. FY2018–2019 also include $67,061 and $30,944 of park master planning and improvement design: the FY2021 book names that purpose, while the later FY2023 book calls the same amounts “Master Planning.” Other shared planning, unclassified land/building projects, county parks and developer-built facilities are not assigned to parks without evidence. A complete community investment total remains unknown. Transfers, reserves and debt repayments are not added to project expenditures.

We retain printed capital totals when they differ from the displayed component sums: FY2017 Parks is $1 lower; FY2021, FY2022 and FY2024 Parks are each $1 higher. The older FY2019 book also lists FY2017 Parks $1 higher than the later audited column used here. These source differences are preserved, not silently reconciled.

Missing years or inputs prevent an average; they are never counted as zero. This is spending during the selected period, not an estimate of an asset’s annual cost over its useful life. A five-year or ten-year average can change as a large project enters or leaves the window.