A look back at our last Local Council of 2023!

Today, we're focusing on a public infrastructure used by all the people of Brussels: we're talking about pavements, as Caroline Joway, the Ecolo-Green deputy councillor for public works, gives you some information in response to an interpellation. In a second part, we also talk about taxes and the 2024 budget.

Pavements 

For the record, the municipality has 42 km of municipal roads with an average pavement width of 2.2 metres, i.e. more than 180,000m² of pavements, as well as 13.6 km of regional roads managed by Bruxelles Mobilité.

Since 2003, an average annual budget of €515,000 has been allocated to repairing the pavements, representing a total investment of €10.5 million and, more generally, an investment of more than €22 million over 20 years in the development of roads, pavements, squares, etc.!

On average, 80% of this budget has been financed by the Brussels Region.

In 20 years, the pavements of 109 streets (out of 135) have been renovated (168,256m²), i.e. 93% of the surface area of Etterbeek's municipal pavements.

The municipality employs 5 municipal pavement workers to deal with all the reports received from the various departments, as well as through the various means available to the public for reporting a road problem (Fix-my Street, e-mails, telephone calls, etc.). Every year, all of Etterbeek's municipal roads are inspected by the officers in order to draw up a priority list of work to be carried out (both in terms of asphalting and pavement repairs). Based on the officers' findings on the condition of a particular road, a list of streets is proposed for repair for approval by the College.

Budget 

Another point: this year, as the 2024 budget could not be voted on in December (as is tradition), the Local Council voted on three twelfths of the provisional budget. This means that the municipal budget for the first quarter of 2024 will be identical to a quarter of the 2023 budget.

Taxes

Additional centimes for personal income tax are being reduced from 6.3% to 6%. This is the municipal supplement that each Etterbeeker pays after the calculation of federal/regional tax. The aim of this measure is to modestly reduce the gap between gross and net salaries. This tax represents only 13% of total revenue. Most of the local authority's revenue comes from other levels of government (Region, Federation, etc.). In addition, the rate of withholding tax remains unchanged.

Do you have any questions? Don't hesitate to send them to us, our local councillors will answer them!