More than $50 million will be invested in waste and recycling collection, city cleaning and upgrades and maintenance to lighting as part of the City of Melbourne’s draft Budget 2021-22.
Lord Mayor, Sally Capp said the funding would ensure essential services such as street cleaning, graffiti and waste removal remained a key focus.
“Getting the basics right is critical to ensure our city is clean, safe and welcoming for residents, workers and visitors,” the Lord Mayor said.
“The funding in the draft Budget will ensure that our grime-busting teams can continue their important work to remove graffiti from hard-to-reach places, high-pressure wash our laneways and sweep our streets clean.”
The $50 million includes a $6 million boost on last year’s funding, with almost $27 million for collection services and disposal, $15.1 million for street cleaning, and $1.1 million for graffiti removal. The city collected 45,000 tonnes of waste and recycling last year, including more than 10,000 mattresses and five million cigarette butts.
Council also proposes to spend around $2.8 million to maintain and upgrade security measures.
“We have been working closely with the Victorian Government and Victoria Police to help make Melbourne a safer city for workers, residents and visitors,” the Lord Mayor said.
“We are always striving to make sure Melbourne remains a safe city by investing in critical infrastructure such as our CCTV cameras, security control room and street lighting.
“We have committed $1.8 million to maintaining 16,000 street lights installed across the municipality. We will install decorative lighting at key locations across the city, including new lighting to improve public safety and illuminate trees on St Kilda Road.”
The city recently invested $40,000 on new bollards, bike hoops and 25 planter boxes to beautify Collins Street, improve public safety and to prevent damage to shopfronts.
Environment portfolio lead Councillor, Rohan Leppert said the draft Budget supported businesses and residents to make smart choices about waste.
“We’re investing $1 million to establish two new waste and recycling hubs in busy city streets, enabling us to cut waste and remove 60 unsightly commercial bins. This makes our laneways more pleasant to walk through while also cutting down rubbish truck collections by 4,000 per year.”
“Every tonne of waste we can prevent from ending up in landfill is better for the environment and better for city amenity.”
