Cape Town - Citizens of Cape Town have until May 5 to engage with the City over its capital expenditure budget of a record R69.9 billion which was tabled and opened for public participation on Wednesday by mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis.
Reading the budget, Hill-Lewis said it centred on the “exciting and scary number” of R10.9 billion budgeted for infrastructure.
“That’s more than was spent on the 2010 World Cup with all its mega projects, and it’s 40% up from this year’s budget. In the last eight years, the most we’ve ever spent on infrastructure was R6.5 billion, so this is big,” he said.
Putting it into context, he said that from July 1 this year the City planned to build R30 million of infrastructure every single day of the year, including weekends.
He said the money spent would significantly widen the social safety net in the city for residents struggling to make ends meet.
Among other proposals contained in the budget was what Hill-Lewis called “the City’s biggest ever safety budget” which was an amount of R5.8bn to fund 85 new metro police officers this year alone, and R166 million to expand its metro police training college.
The mayor said that the City had a plan to equip its law enforcement officers with the powers to do real investigative police work.
“We don’t want to just make arrests. We want to secure convictions. Out of 674 arrests for firearms made in just under two years by our metro police and law enforcement, there were only six convictions. That’s less than 1%.”
To aid this process he said the City had hired 44 investigators for its safety and security investigation unit, along with analysts.
On social spending Hill-Lewis said the City was proposing a total social support package of R4.3 billion, of which R1.9 billion would go towards rates rebates, and R2.3 billion would be for free basic services for the poor.
Pushing the City’s goal to end load-shedding, the city allocated R2.3 billion, which includes R1 billion to operate the Steenbras hydro-electric plant and R53 million in “cash for power” payments for solar power from residents and business.
On housing Hill-Lewis said: “We have allocated R37.8 million for our no-cost transfers of 2 500 rental units per year over the next three years.”
During the question and answer session after the speech, EFF councillor Linda Mazwi accused Hill-Lewis of paying lip service to the issue of corruption.
Mazwi insisted that the mayor submit himself to a lifestyle audit.
GOOD Party councillor Anton Louw said when Eskom received approval for a massive 18% tariff increase, this pushed the cost per kilowatt hour to 173.80c/kwh.
He said in Cape Town the tariffs were already nearly double that on average.
“So, while municipalities must raise revenue in order to provide services, the mark-ups must be fair, affordable and just in the current financial climate.
“This particularly applies to a relatively well-off City, with savings in the bank.”