ABSTRACT
The recognition and response to these new conditions has varied. One response has been developed by the town of West Hartford, Connecticut, and deals with the new realities of the marketplace as well as the traditional perspectives of the policymaking arena. The success of the approach is a result of the strategic nature of the planning which went into its development. The town of West Hartford has recently embarked on a program which is intended to provide an extensive degree of integration of capital improvement planning and programming with capital financing and debt management. With the awareness that the new market conditions could have a serious effect on the town's ability to sustain a responsible capital improvement program, the town council responded to administrative recommendations to step back and take a strategic approach to the entire question of capital programming and financing.
