The Cape Town Central City Improvement District (CCID) is asking the City of Cape Town to support an increase in its budget to meet the demands on its services due to unprecedented growth in the CBD over the past four years.
The CCID’s current five-year plan, which ends in July 2020, is based on a budget approved in the 2014/15 financial year. Conditions on the ground have changed substantially over this time and existing resources are not sufficient to meet the demands on its services and sustain its successes.
The City has been asked to support a 12.5 percent increase in the CCID’s operational budget, which is 5 percentage points above the annual increase of 7.5 percent. The increase will come into effect on 1 July 2019.
CCID CEO Tasso Evangelinos said: “As a public-private partnership and NPC, the CCID is focused on making the Central City a safe, clean and caring urban environment that is always open for business. For nearly two decades, we have worked tirelessly to create a model downtown and as a result our CBD is now considered to be the safest and cleanest traditional downtown area in the country.
“The consequence is the CBD has achieved unprecedented growth, both in the numbers of new developments and in the tens of thousands more visitors the Central City attracts, day and night.”
Meeting the increasing demands of a busier CBD, however, was becoming more and more difficult, especially in the critical areas of safety and security, social development and urban management. This is where the bulk of the additional budget would be spent – including on more security personnel, traffic wardens and cleaning services.
“The number of people working and living in the CBD, and visiting it, has increased but our services are struggling to meet the growth in the area,” Tasso said. “The needs of the CCID’s social development team, who work with the most vulnerable people in the CBD community, have increased beyond the scope of our existing resources.
“We therefore require additional funds that reflect the increasingly dynamic nature of the urban environment in which we operate, as well as the ever-growing footfall.”
This unprecedented growth could neither have been foreseen nor prepared for when the existing five-year budget was drawn up.
Tasso said the proposed budgetary increase would allow the CCID to top up its numerous services as part of its drive to make the Central City economically sustainable.
Image by Johan Dempers