Cheap land, cheap town apartments and tariff hikes
Municipality's plan to develop Krugersdorp may cost R2,7 billion
Mogale City Local Municipality has tabled its 2018/ 2019 budget and the community will have an opportunity to make inputs through a public participation process.
Norman Sedumedi, Mogale City Local Municipality MMC for Finance, presented the budget at the 13th Special Council meeting and included an estimate for 2019/ 2020 and 2020/ 2021 before it is opened for public input.
Nkosana Zali, spokesperson for the municipality, said the entity seeks to achieve a balanced budget on an affordable basis currently and in the future.
The municipality is planning a six per cent tariff hike for property rates, refuse removal and other sundry tariffs, in order to alleviate the burden on customers.
The operating expenditure proposal is R2,7 billion, which is a 1 per cent increase compared to last year, whilst the capital budget is proposed at R281 million which is an R84 million decrease on last year
The council aims to give those who don’t have RDP houses or qualify for loans to buy houses an opportunity to buy land at lower cost and build their houses on it.
“Council also looked at the Land Disposal Acquisition and Disposal Policy, which is meant to facilitate the sale of residential and church sites that were approved in the last ordinary council meeting,” Zali said.
A plan to build high density social housing (flats) in the city’s Central Business District with money provided by the National Treasury was approved last year.
“Council also considered another land reservation agreement between the state-owned Schedule 2 entity, Independent Development Trust (IDT) and the municipality for the implementation of inner city social housing initiatives. This project identifies the inner city for mixed use and residence anchored on high-density development and infill. This will give the CBD a new face and raise activity in the city centre.”
In addition, the council plans to build an entertainment park which will cost close to R3 billion on the Krugersdorp Game Reserve’s property.
“The park will be built on 400ha of the 1 600ha of the Krugersdorp Game Reserve.”
The council is also looking at fixing the issues hindering the Leratong City Initiative which has a regional mall, 17 000 housing units, a light industrial park and a regional transport park in mind.
The council will also be investigating claims of unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure incurred during the 2015/ 2016 financial year as initially reported by councillor Bongi Nkosi, the chairperson of the Municipal Public Accounts Committee.
Both these reservation agreements shall be valid for a period of six months.
The public participation process will be advertised within the following two weeks. The process will start mid-April and be completed in the last week of May. The advertisements will, as per usual, outline how the inputs will be collected.
Do you perhaps have more information pertaining to this story? Email us at krugersdorpnews@caxton.co.za or phone us on 011 955 1130.I
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