Mayor’s Remarks:
1. Pulling out all the stops to promote quality industries and building a livable city
(1) In addition to serving as the cultural capital of Taiwan, Tainan is also an emerging tech city with innovative R&D highlights in many of its industries. The Department of Information and International Relations and the Bureau of Economic Development collaborated and invited seven quality, local businesses, including CHIMEI Frozen Food, Eminent Luggage Corporation, Hwa Meei Optical, Taiwan Lung Meng Advanced Composite Materials, Lucidity Enterprise, Nam Liong Group, and HerMin Textile, to film two videos, both titled Tainan’s Spirit – The Prides of Our Industries. The videos showed concrete examples of the abundant vigor that exists in Tainan’s businesses.
(2) Theses seven local businesses strive to maintain taste and quality while establishing brand images comparable to their international counterparts. For example, CHIMEI Frozen Food sold more than 1,000 gua bao (pork belly buns) to the United States each year and Eminent Luggage Corporation’s luggage products reached the highest market share in the world at 32% last year. These businesses all stand by environmentally-friendly R&D practices. Taiwan Lung Meng Advanced Composite Materials invested substantial funding and time in developing stone paper. In response to the circular economy trend, Hwa Meei Optical produced glasses made from recycled fishnets. HerMin Textile used collagen extracted from the scales of Tainan’s milkfish to produce silk and fabric. Nam Liong Group has proactively promoted organic farming and invested in developing green building materials. All of these businesses have employed innovative, environmentally-friendly practices to become market leaders in their respective fields.
(3) What makes these businesses admirable is the fact that they take on their corporate social responsibility and highly value public welfare. Lucidity Enterprise values their employees’ welfare and also cares for senior citizens. It purchased senior shower vans and provides free shower services to underprivileged seniors in Tainan. Furthermore, Lucidity Enterprise has sponsored more than 20 rural elementary schools. Nam Liong Group has voluntarily taken up the responsibility of maintaining Sankandian Nature Park in Yongkang District, providing quality space for leisurely activities and doing their part to give back to society. I am grateful for business owners that cherish Tainan and always contribute to our city even when their charitable acts go unnoticed. I would also like to encourage all administrative teams to offer pragmatic help to businesses and resolve investment obstacles, ultimately transforming Tainan into a truly livable city. Lucidity Enterprise has offered its employees generous birth allowances, childcare allowances, and home loans. It is therefore no surprise that Lucidity Enterprise has a low turnover rate. These positive examples should be shared with Tainan citizens, and we should all be proud of how these local businesses have contributed to society. I encourage more quality businesses to care for Tainan citizens by improving the overall job environment.
2. The local elections are coming up. The staff members of the Tainan City Government must put all effort into ensuring the smooth progress of the elections
(1) The local elections will take place this week. All election-related work is now underway. Other than the mayoral, councilor, and village chief elections, referendums are also included in this round of local elections. This will prolong the duration of the elections, which poses a major challenge to all municipal staff members. I would like to thank the municipal staff members for their hard work, and I would like to ask all departments responsible for electoral affairs to focus their efforts on ensuring that the elections and vote counting are completed smoothly.
(2) The end of the elections represents a new beginning in municipal governance. The municipal team’s two consecutive eight-year terms are coming to an end. During this stage, we must remain diligent. No matter how close you come to the end, your efforts are wasted if you do not reach the finish line. Thus, I encourage the municipal staff members to remain impartial to external influences and continue to focus on serving Tainan’s citizenry.
(3) During this wave of elections, to rally for support, some candidates resorted to slandering the municipal government’s administrative achievements or even defamed first-line civil servants. Although I am saddened by these hostile acts, I know that elections are temporary, whereas municipal work will continue on. Thus, I encourage all municipal staff members to take criticism with humility if there is truth to it and to ignore irrational and unfounded accusations. What matters more than anything is to be responsible for your own actions and always work with the citizens’ interests in mind.
Announcements
1. The Bureau of Transportation’s report on the priority network planning and multilevel parking lot construction project for the Advanced Transportation System (refer to written sources for details)
Decision: Approved for reference filing
Mayor’s Remarks:
(1) Since Tainan was upgraded as a special municipality, the Bureau of Transportation has taken a pragmatic approach in promoting strategies for the Rapid Transit Systematization Plan. Relevant work has been carried out on schedule and quality has been delivered. Phased improvements to the public transportation environment have been completed. The transportation volume for buses has risen from 7.49 million passengers in 2010 to 10.58 million in 2017, which is nearly a three-fold growth. However, the Bureau of Transportation did not cease their efforts there. Rather, it channeled its efforts into planning the Advanced Transportation System. I would like to thank Director-General Lin for leading the Bureau of Transportation and collaborating with other departments to promote the Advanced Transportation System. Currently, the blue, green, and red lines have been approved by the Executive Yuan and included in the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program’s railway infrastructure plan, setting the foundation for Tainan’s development in the coming century.
(2) To resolve parking issues, the Bureau of Transportation rolled out the Parking No. 1: Ten Thousand Parking Spaces project and allocated budget from the Executive Yuan’s Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program to build multilevel parking lots, revitalize public and private land, and reward the private sector for establishing parking lots. Under this project, an additional 10,000 parking spaces will be added between 2017 and 2020. The urban-rural plan under the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program seeks to improve parking. Currently, the central government has approved the addition of four multilevel parking lots. The construction cost for the four parking lots totals at NT $1.66 billion, among which NT $870 million is sponsored by the central government. Central government subsidies are pending for three other multilevel parking lot projects, bringing the total number of projects to seven. After these projects are completed, an additional 2,290 car parking spaces and 686 scooter parking spaces will be available. The number of parking spaces in Tainan City has doubled since Tainan was upgraded as a special municipality.
(3) The Bureau of Transportation has diligently proposed solutions for parking and public transportation based on Tainan’s demands during different phases. The Tainan City Rapid Transit Preparatory Office was officially established on October 22, 2018. I encourage the staff members of the Bureau of Transportation to pull out all the stops and continue to lay the foundations for Tainan’s rail transportation system for the coming century. Our common goal is to provide citizens with a livable city that is pedestrian-friendly, offers convenient parking, and boasts the best traffic safety in Taiwan.
(4) I would like to ask the Secretary-General to handle matters concerning the urban land use rezoning and expropriation with compensation of the Tainan High Speed Rail Station area and its depot. Please be especially attentive to the landscape design for the E5 Multilevel Parking Lot at Tainan Municipal Cultural Center and Ximen-Jiankang No. 22 Multilevel Parking Lot. The design must fit in with the surrounding buildings. The E5 Multilevel Parking Lot at Tainan Motor Vehicles Service Station will be established by the library or in a multifunctional space by a nearby administrative building. I would like to ask Deputy Mayor Chang to act as convener and coordinator for the various departments in charge of this matter. In terms of whether an underground parking lot can be added to the Environmental Protection Bureau’s office building, I would like to ask the Bureau of Transportation to assess if there is a large demand for parking in the area and have Deputy Mayor Change lead interdepartmental coordination. The Bureau of Transportation should take the lead in determining whether the green line of the mass rapid transit system will be built on an elevated track, aboveground, or underground.
2. The Environmental Protection Bureau’s report on Tainan’s Project for Clear Sky (refer to written sources for details)
Decision: Approved for reference filing
Mayor’s Remarks:
(1) Taiwan’s topography is characterized by tall mountain ridges. Due to this landscape, northeasterly winds are prevalent during autumn and winter. Tainan, situated in the southeast, is leeward to the northeasterly winds. Tainan has stable weather and lacks convection, which causes air pollutants to accumulate during autumn and winter. Changes in atmospheric conditions are a major factor that affects the severity of Tainan’s air pollution. Tainan is subject to weak wakes brought by the northeasterly winds, meaning that the inversion layer is difficult to penetrate. Factors such as low precipitation during autumn and winter, being situated upwind, external air pollution being brought in by cold high-pressure systems, and unfavorable geographical and climate conditions all affect Tainan’s air quality in a negative way.
(2) In June 2014, Tainan became the first municipality in Taiwan to merge the forces of 18 municipal departments in stringently controlling local air pollution sources. By launching the Project for Clear Sky, an action plan centered on reducing and controlling particulate matter, rolling reviews have been held every year to review Tainan’s air quality. The project started with eight aspects and 25 action strategies in 2014 and has since been expanded to include nine aspects and 50 action strategies in 2018. As an example, one of the action strategies involved replacing coal-fired boilers with natural gas. With the efforts of Environmental Protection Bureau and Bureau of Economic Development, 168 industrial coal-fired boilers were replaced with natural gas between 2012 and 2018. The Bureau of Education has also allocated a portion of its budget to subsidize the replacement of boilers across all local schools in 2019.
(3) I would like to thank Director Lin and the staff members of the Environmental Protection Bureau for ensuring pollutant control on a day-to-day basis and for strengthening control efforts during autumn and winter by increasing the length of roads cleaned for dust from 4,650 to 10,600 kilometers per month, increasing the processed length to 66.6% per day. Scientific instruments have been used and micro sensors deployed to monitor pollution sources. UAVs are also used to monitor cars producing large amounts of pollution. The Environmental Protection Bureau’s monitor data show that Tainan’s air quality is improving every year. The number of red alert days for particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) between January and October in 2017 has reached a five-year low, compared with the same period from 2014 to 2017. According to the air quality index (AQI) from January to October 2018, red alerts were issued on a total of eight days, which is 50% less compared to the same time last year (2017) and 20 days less than the same duration in 2015. The AQI is not the only indicator that has seen improvements, PM2.5 concentrations have also dropped. The average PM2.5 concentration from January to October 2014 was 27.3μg/m3, and that of July to October 2018 was 22.6μg/m3, marking a 17.2% improvement. In addition, particulate matter 10 (PM 10) has conformed to AQI standards for three consecutive years, meaning that Tainan may be officially listed as a level two control zone for PM10 by next year. Data show that efforts to improve Tainan’s air quality have been effective. I would like to ask concerned departments to keep up the good work and continue to combat air pollution and aim to make Tainan’s air quality not only better but also the best.