Ward 59 Councillor: Mikhail Manuel
Proposed 2025/2026 City Budget: What will your rates and fixed tariffs be spent on?
This proposed budget will see a R300 million investment that directly benefits our neighbourhoods and surrounds, culminating in a R1 billion investment over the next three years. The investment focuses on public transport, congestion relief, electricity infrastructure, law enforcement, parks, tree planting and public space upgrades.
Cape Town is a rapidly growing global city. Our population is expected to surpass that of Johannesburg in the next few years. Our city is also incredibly popular as a global tourism destination with growing interest from the business community. This is great news for job creation, which is desperately needed to improve the lives of millions of Capetonians. However, a growing City also comes with increased demands on the budget and increased cost of operations.
Over the last three years, we have worked towards our vision for Cape Town as a City of Hope. Hope for all people, and hope for South Africa. The image below breaks down the priorities for Cape Town.
Of course, these priorities are funded from public funds which brings us to 2025/2026 financial year City budget that is now available for your comments.
The City spends 75 percent of its capital budget in lower income areas. This is because those areas are most in need of infrastructure investment to drive progress for each individual, family, and household.
This year’s proposed capital budget is R12.7 billion, which will add up to R39.7 billion over the next three years.
We have prioritised water, sewer, public transport, electricity, and housing infrastructure investments. The image above gives a high-level break down of our City-wide planned investments into several of our core focuses: water infrastructure, public pools and parks, street lighting, road repairs, and cleansing and refuse removal etc.
I believe our investment in Safety and Security is the most exciting aspect of our budget. This year’s budget includes our biggest investment in law enforcement to date – hundreds of new law enforcement officers, which will include a cohort of officers dedicated to each Ward.
A third of the new officers will be used to escort our City staff to collect refuse, repair electricity outages or pipe bursts, and undertake road repairs. In a growing number of areas, our City service teams are unable to undertake their tasks due to being mugged at gun point, highjackings, and intimidation. It is a sad reality for which we need to allocate resources to ensure we do everything possible to move all of Cape Town forward.
Moving closer our neighbourhoods, our sewerage is treated at the Athlone Waste Water Treatment Works, our refuse is transported to the Coastal Park Landfill, our water comes from Newlands Reservoir, and our electricity infrastructure is serviced by the Wynberg and Mowbray Electricity Depots. These four focus areas are budgeted to receive a share of R91 440 000.00 for maintenance, capacity upgrades, street light conversion to LED, gas to electricity projects, traffic calming, and responses to Polyphagous Shot Hole Borer Beatle infestations. These projects will benefit our areas as well as the relevant neighbouring residents that they serve.
Even closer to home, we will see the M3 Congestion Relief project starting this coming financial year, the Wynberg CBD and Public Transport Hub being upgraded, Wynberg Park receiving a path upgrade – a project driven by Cllr Emile Langenhoven, the Constantia Fire Station being upgraded, and the Claremont MyCiti Project continuing. Wynberg will also see a welcomed extension to homeless accommodation, which will take pressure off of the UTurn-run safe space in Claremont. These projects are in close proximity to us and directly impacting our safety, congestion, homeless care services, and fire-fighting services. The total budget allocations for these projects come to R204 000 000.00 for the 2025/26 financial year.
There is a further R1.8 million budgeted to projects that are planned for Ward 59 specifically. These include an upgrade to Rondebosch Park, a dedicated water tanker to begin our aggressive tree planting programme, preparation work for upgrades to the Rondebosch Main Road precinct, and paving projects in Claremont, Rondebosch, and Newlands.
I have not included budget allocations specific to Ward 59 road resurfacing, tree planting and trimming, staffing capacity for general service request responses, sewer or water infrastructure upgrades, and line painting and road signs amongst others. I have requested information from our district office on any planned sewer or water infrastructure upgrades, and road resurfacing projects specific to our area. Many of the items not mentioned are generally actioned as a result of service requests, and therefore don’t have specific line items in the proposed budget.
Therefore, the budget details provided above only form a portion of the benefit our area receives from the rates and fixed tariff contributions from all ratepayers in Cape Town. Many of the projects listed above will continue for a period of three years, which will result in a total investment of close to R1 billion that will directly benefit our area.
We are grateful for every resident’s contribution towards the running of Cape Town. Your rates contribution and your contribution via the fixed tariff of the utility services goes a long way to improve the lives of people across the City.
I’ve included two graphics to demonstrate how your rates and fixed contributions will be spent per rand of contribution across Cape Town.
I hope this email has helped to demonstrate how the proposed budget will benefit our area and how you are helping to improve the lives of all Capetonians.
A R300 million investment for our area in a single year is significant. This is separate from the efforts myself, and my colleagues in neighbouring wards, will undertake to make sure we push for services of a high standard. I will also continue to fight for the lion’s share of the operational budget to be spent on maintaining infrastructure in Ward 59.
I want to end on a note about logging service requests. Logging a service request triggers an official to respond, and in turn triggers the spending of the operational budget. In this view, we can never underestimate the power of a resident logging a service request. It has a direct impact on the spending of operational budgets and a direct impact on longer term resource allocation.
I hope this email has been helpful to give you a sense of what your rates and fixed tariff contributions will be spent on.
Additional detail is available in the full budget, which can be found in this link:capetown.gov.za/City-Connect/Have-your-say/Issues-open-for-public-comment/draft-budget-for-2025-2026
The public have an opportunity to comment on the budget until 2 May 2025.
Kind regards,
Cllr Mikhail Manuel