Mayor Patricia de Lille used her speech before a full council meeting to highlight the need to decisively address apartheid spatial planning that she said kept the majority of residents away from opportunities for jobs, good education and health care.
She said the release of 11 identified pieces of land in Woodstock and the city centre had to be done speedily. “More pieces of government-owned land must also be made available for the development of affordable housing.”
De Lille said that if Cape Town wanted to remain globally competitive, “we must bring residents closer to opportunities and be a catalyst for job creation and investment”.
She said that last month the council had passed a resolution for the appointment of four specialist teams to assist in expediting the delivery of housing opportunities and to oversee and monitor the planning, design, and construction of thousands of housing opportunities.
Yesterday the council approved the capital adjustments budget for this financial year with Mayco member for finance Johan van der Merwe saying in a full council meeting yesterday that the adjustment “has no detrimental impact on the provision of basic services”.
This brings the City’s current capital budget for 2018/19 to approximately R8.85 billion.
An amount of R443.8 million has been included in the adjustments budget, which is about 6% of last year’s R6.8bn capital budget, said Van der Merwe. “Unspent funds are not lost, but are added to the current capital budget.”
He said the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) allowed for an adjustments budget that may authorise the spending of funds that were unspent at the end of the previous financial year.
“This relates to instances where the underspending could not reasonably have been foreseen and thus could not have been included in the current budget for the new financial year,” he said.
The City would ensure its capital budget was spent “as efficiently and timeously as possible within the framework of the law, due process and the realities that affect performance on the ground”.