Transport and Public Works
[1] Whether the disposal of the Tafelberg property as part of the City of Cape Town’s Regeneration Programme will enable the Province to extract the maximum value from the most valuable inner-city properties to create an income stream from which projects for the poor can be cross-subsidised;
[2] whether the increasing cost of urban sprawl was taken into account when this model was adopted; if not, why not; if so, what are the relevant details;
[3] whether any mechanisms are in place to ensure that the cross-subsidisation of socio-economic objectives through the sale of state land and that they are transparent; if so, what are the relevant details?
5(1) But for one correction in that it is a Provincial Regeneration Programme relating to the inner City of Cape Town, the answer is yes.
5(2) The Constitutional Court has recently established that Municipal Planning is an exclusive municipal function and as such the determination of the urban edge, Spatial Development Frameworks and other municipal instruments factor in the containment and cost of urban sprawl most directly, and by which laws or instruments every landowner within the City, including the Province, is bound. This notwithstanding, it is my understanding that the Western Cape Government is alive to the issue of urban sprawl and takes it into account in its planning and environmental policy determinations as well as its support and oversight of municipalities.
5(3) Given the fiscal constraints facing the state currently; and particularly in relation to the budget cuts that have been applied to our provincial coffers, the achievement of all our socio-economic objectives are cross-subsidized by way of revised budget determinations following all required processes. An increasingly vital element of these budgets is the realization of revenue by provinces directly; through inter alia the disposal of assets.
