POLOKWANE – For the first time ever, the city’s roads and transportation budget surpassed the budget for water, with roads and transportation’s budget for the 2014/15 financial year R303,7 million, and the budget for water R122 million.
The budget, which was presented by the member of the mayoral committee responsible for finance, Charles Molepo, and adopted during a council meeting on Thursday, also included R40,4 million for sports and recreation, R19,8 million for electricity, and R4,1 million for sanitation.
The total capital budget for this period was set as R519 million, while the total budgeted operating revenue was increased from R2 billion in the last financial year to R2,2 billion for the upcoming financial year.
The total municipal salary budget amounted to R504 million, which made up 23,4% of the total expenditure budget.
The following tariff increases were recommended to the city council for approval: Electricity, water and sanitation: 7% each, and refuse removal: 6%.
Molepo said Eskom had increased bulk purchase prices by 8%, but municipalities were only allowed to increase their tariffs by 7% as per guideline increase in the Municipal Finance Management Act Circulars 70 and 72 from national treasury.
Molepo said the municipality had taken the input received from the integrated development plan (IDP) and budget consultations with communities and key stakeholders from April 1 to mid-May into consideration.
“During this process we included farmers, businesses and traditional leaders on our list of key stakeholders,” he said.
“The municipality will implement a new general valuation roll from July 1. The roll was open for inspection and objections from April 7 to May 30 and after further consultation with stakeholders this date was extended to June 23. The extension was granted to give owners more time to inspect and object to any entry in the valuation roll,” he explained.
“A supplementary valuation roll is due to be submitted today (Thursday May 29) to correct entries in the general valuation roll and to include possible omissions. The draft rates policy was also open for inspection and the community was invited to submit representations on the policy. The final rates policy will be submitted to council in June for adoption,” he said.
“Due to the increase in the total valuations the tariffs will be adjusted to realise the rates revenue increase from R279 million to R302 million, which equates to 8% including growth of 2%. A report will be submitted to council early in June to determine the assessment rates tariffs applicable for the 2014/15 financial year.”
Molepo cautioned that the municipality’s revenue base remained insufficient and needed to improve over time if the municipality was to realise their developmental “smart city” path.
Molepo thanked all residents and businesses who continued to pay their municipal accounts and said this was why the municipality was able to expand and sustain service delivery.
He said the municipality was, on a continuous basis, cleaning up the debtor’s database to ensure accounts were submitted correctly and timeously to all residents.
He added that provision had been made to register 15 000 indigent households, which would receive free services.
Molepo also told the city council that the contract for on-street paid parking expired in November and management was investigating the possibility of taking responsibility internally for this activity, once the current contract had expired.
He said the upgrading of the IT network also received serious attention.
