The Cost of Municipal Services

• That municipality always wins Blue and Green Drop awards – I wonder how much they spend on water services staffing?
• Am I spending enough on roads maintenance?
• Are my electricity distribution costs similar to my neighbouring municipality?
• Are there benchmarks for the cost of solid waste management for a municipality my size?

…if the cost of municipal services are an unknown, you will be severely challenged to manage a sustainable municipality!

The Municipal Benchmarking Initiative (MBI) aims to assist local government practitioners through learning and sharing experiences and practices to improve performance and achieve targets. As part of the MBI, SALGA have identified the need to assess the costs of a number of selected municipal services for a number of sample municipalities in different operating environments (such as urban and rural) using appropriate comparable methodologies.  This information will be used to support the allocation of adequate resources to enable effective service provision.  The study endeavours to determine cost benchmarks that relate to what it costs to provide a certain municipal service under a given set of conditions.

The targeted services for the study are:
Core study focus:

• Water supply
• Sanitation
• Solid waste management
• Roads and stormwater management
• Electricity distribution

Additional study considerations:

• Municipal public transport
• Municipal environmental management responsibilities

Local government (municipalities) has a responsibility of providing services to communities, including water supply, sanitation, solid waste management, roads and stormwater management, electricity, municipal public transport and municipal environmental management.  It is important for municipalities to understand the costs related to the provision of these services, as such information provides the basis for sound budgeting, assists them to make strategic decisions, planning of future service extension, level of service, levels of cross subsidizations and determining tariffs and service charges.