Mayor's remarks:
I. Continuous holiday starting from April 1st
The four-day holiday for the Children’s Day and the Tomb Sweeping Day is only a few days away, and I would like to wish all children of Tainan City a pleasant Children’s Day. Since large crowds of tourists and homecomers are expected during this continuous holiday, all responsible agencies shall remain alerted to prepare all necessary works related to traffic, public security and fire safety, etc. Furthermore, the Police Bureau is also requested to conduct service plans properly, including the additional assignment of the police force to assist with the traffic control and guidance in such areas of all tourist attraction sites in addition to the public cemeteries and columbarium, and to ensure the smoothness of the traffic. Moreover, all director-generals are requested to forward my kind regards and requests to responsible colleagues on duty during the holiday for their great efforts in ensuring a peaceful and smooth holiday for all the citizens and tourists in Tainan.
II. New intelligent parking lot on Rongyu Street in East District
1. The Rongyu Street parking lot opened on March 23 was originally a vacant national land and a city property. To overcome the parking demands at the surroundings of the Tainan Cultural Center and Rongyu Street, the city government and the National Property Administration cooperated in the construction of a temporary parking lot and outsourced the operation to introduce an intelligent parking management equipment in order to not only activate the vacant land and overcome the parking issue but also bring in private resources and technology parking management, creating a win-win-win situation for the citizens, business operators and the city government in cooperation, which is also a role model for parking spaces with the integration of the public and private cooperative efforts.
2. The number of parking spaces in the city has been increased from more than 30,000 spaces before the city-county consolidation to more than 88,000 spaces available in the city. Despite that the number of spaces has increased by nearly three folds, the current total number of vehicles in Tainan City is approximately 700,000 units; as a result, the demand is still greater than supply. Accordingly, in the future, the project of Parking No. 1: Ten Thousand Parking Spaces will continue to be promoted through the methods of constructions by the city government, encouragement of private investment, and activation of vacant public and private lands in order to continuously increase the parking supply. The goal is to increase ten thousand parking spaces within 4 years by 2020.
3. The Rongyu Street parking lot offers 352 parking spaces for cars and 165 parking spaces for motorcycles, and it is an intelligent parking lot equipped with a parking guidance system in order to save drivers’ time for searching for parking spaces and to reduce air pollution during such searches. Furthermore, it is equipped with a mobile vehicle searching system to assist drivers to find the parking locations of their vehicles, and it is also equipped with intelligent parking management equipment, including innovative service models of, such as, license plate recognition, eTag, detection for occupied special parking spaces, voice guidance, multimedia inquiry machines, etc. All of such features of the parking lot are able to provide quality parking services to the public, and the citizens are always welcome to use the facility and service.
III. Executive Yuan passed the bill of Special Act for Prospective Fundamental Infrastructure Project
1. On March 23, Premier Lin Chuan officially announced the passing of the bill of Prospective Fundamental Infrastructure Project, and the content specified that the upper limit of this project is NT$ 890 billion in the form of special budget with the construction period till the end of 2024, which includes a total of 5 construction sectors including “green energy, railway, water environment, digital and urban-rural construction”. In addition, the purpose of this project has been emphasized to stimulate the economy, to expedite industry transformation, to promote overall development locally, and to achieve regional balance. It is expected that after the execution of the eight-year project, it can stimulate investments of public and private enterprises to reach NT$ 1,770 billion and provide 40,000 to 50,000 job opportunities.
2. In terms of green energy development and low-carbon city, Tainan has indeed demonstrated the best among all other cities, and it is the reason for President Tsai Ing-wen to set up the green energy science city in Tainan after the election; consequently, Tainan City has been able to acquire the greatest amount of government subsidy for the green-energy-related budget. With regard to the railway construction, the Railway Underground Project currently extends from Rende to North District via East District. In the next stage, the railway construction will extend to the north with the main development focusing on the Yongkang Railway Underground Project in conjunction with the Sinshih Railway Elevation Project and the Shanhua Ground Railway Improvement Project”. Furthermore, in terms of the advanced public transportation, Tainan City plans to implement the monorail rapid transit system, and its priority road network includes a total two transit lines of the green line and the blue line, which have both been approved earlier.
3. In terms of water environment construction, presently, Tainan City has been able to gain the budget support for the drainage system remediation of five regions: Jingliao drainage, Liucuo drainage, Hutou river drainage, Sanye river drainage, Liukuailiao drainage and 14 stems of rainwater sewers as well as improvement of water pump units and flood detention pools, for a total of NT$ 11.1 billion. It is expected to remediate drainage paths of a length of 58km and 14 rainwater sewer stems such that the effective improvement in the flood area reaches 1,364 hectares. We believe that such construction can make Tainan a safer city, and I also thank the legislators of Tainan City for their joint effort in gaining the budget support from the central government.
4. In addition, to ensure the stable water supply of greater Tainan area, the Water Resource Agency of Ministry of Economic Affairs planned to invest a budget of NT$ 12 billion in the Zengwun and Nanhua Pipeline Connection Construction under the prospective project. Once the construction is complete, the Nanhua water purification plant will be able to flexibly retrieve and adjust the water sources of the Zengwun reservoir and the Nanhua reservoir in order to sufficiently satisfy the water supply demands for general public use and industrial use, which is crucial to the future stable development and prosperity of Tainan City.
5. Furthermore, with regard to the digital and urban-rural constructions, Deputy Mayor Wu, Deputy Mayor Chang and Secretary-general Lee are requested to invite all departments and bureaus of the city government to conduct thorough auditing works in order to select public constructions that are capable of enhancing the public environment quality, improving the living condition of the general public, and creating greatest impression to the Tainan citizens in priority along with active efforts in seeking supports of ministries and departments of the central government to incorporate such constructions into projects for execution.
6. All of these constructions will transform the image of Tainan and will allow Tainan to advance significantly, which will also create positive impressions of the public on the new government’s administrative achievements. We are grateful for the full support and execution of the central government. Currently, despite that the Executive Yuan has passed the bill of Special Act for Prospective Fundamental Infrastructure Projects, such act still needs to go through examination and budget approval processes at the Legislative Yuan. We look forward to the support of the Legislative Yuan in the passing of such bill and the successful approval of the special budget in this session.
Reports
I. Civil Affairs Bureau reported the 2017 Preparation Work for Tomb Sweeping Day (refer to written sources for details)
Decision: Approved for reference filing.
Mayor’s comments:
(1) The Tomb Sweeping holiday this year consists of 4 consecutive days, and the crowd for tomb sweeping and ancestor worship ceremony is expected to increase; therefore, the Civil Affairs Bureau and the relevant departments and bureaus are requested to complete all countermeasures and work allocations thoroughly.
(2) In recent years, the Civil Affairs Bureau has received great recognition for its policy on folk activities, particularly the activity of collective burning of joss paper. This year, nine private columbarium operators agreed to cooperate with the collective burning of joss paper policy. In addition, all public columbarium operators have promoted and implemented the policies of the closing of the ghost money burner, one incense burner and one incense stick for the haven incense burner, implementation of no burning and use of incense sticks inside the columbarium. Such policies are also recognized for effectively reducing the emission of particulate matters (PM2.5) of the incense sticks.
(3) Furthermore, the cleaning of the breeding sources at the cemeteries is also essential to the prevention of dengue fever. The Civil Affairs Bureau and the district offices are requested to enhance the educational promotion on such matter in advance by requesting the public to perform the steps of “check, drain, brush, clean” after the completion of tomb sweeping activity to clean off containers with water in order to prevent breeding of disease spreading mosquitos. Moreover, the public shall follow the rule of Four Nos and Two Reminders as the short slogan for no burning of weeds, no arbitrarily discard of cigarette butts, no arbitrarily flying of joss paper, no use of fireworks, be reminded to put out all fires and be reminded to carry garbage away.
(4) For the zero-cemetery policy, the Civil Affairs Bureau is requested to re-examine the schedule and promote the policy with best efforts.
II. Transportation Bureau reported the “Tainan City Transportation Construction Achievement and Outlook” (refer to written sources for details)
Decision: Approved for reference filing.
Mayor’s comments:
(1) To overcome the 8 major transportation issues, the Transportation Bureau has conducted a thorough review of the aspects of road network, buses, driving and parking, etc., and four main strategies have been established with the planning of 20 key work items such that the outstanding achievement of Tainan Transportation 1.0 has been implemented in practice. In the future, we will head toward the Tainan Transportation 2.0 with the launch of 10 main projects in four major aspects one by one in order to expedite the improvement of the transportation issues. I especially thank the teams lead by the previous Deputy Mayor Chang, Deputy Mayor Wu, current Director-general Lin of the Transportation Bureau, and Director-general Su of the Public Works Bureau for their efforts in the transportation of the city.
(2) Over the past six years, the four main strategies have been focused on the convenient transportation construction, rapid transit public transport, intelligent traffic management, systematic parking management as the keys to traffic improvement. In addition, 20 main tasks have been executed, including the Railway Underground Project, the construction of a one-hour living circle, an increase of bus annual passenger capacity by 167% to reach 20.03 million passengers, the total number of users of green-energy transportation T-Bile reaching more than75,000 users, an increase of the number of parking spaces by nearly three folds to reach more than 58,000 spaces, and a total of 122 privately funded parking sites with the number of parking spaces increased by more than two folds to more than 28,000 spaces. All of such achievements have been able to effectively improve the traffic and transportation issues in Tainan City, creating an environment with smooth traffic, safe roads, and passengers.
(3) The Transportation Bureau is encouraged to continue the construction achievement of Transportation 1.0 and to advance further to Transportation 2.0 such that in terms of the four major aspects of Railway Grade Separation, Advanced Public Transit System, Comprehensive Transfer Station Development, and Greater Tainan Intelligent Traffic”. All projects and work items can be continuously promoted and launched. All colleagues are also encouraged to continue their efforts in achieving the goal of providing a safer, comfortable and convenient traffic environment to the public. The Transportation Bureau and all departments and bureaus are requested to continue their efforts in achieving such goal in the near future.
(4) The Secretary-general has mentioned that the transmission expense of intelligent transportation facilities is a long-term issue; therefore, the Transportation Bureau is requested to further consider the feasibility of reducing such cost. Deputy Mayor Chang has mentioned that the central government has temporarily included the budgets for the railway grade separation extensions as well as the advanced public transit system; accordingly, the Transportation Bureau is requested to start the subsequent administrative works of planning, design, environmental evaluation, etc., and to maintain contacts with the Ministry of Transportation and Communications at all time; please also feedback whenever obstacles are encountered. Previously, to prevent the disease of dengue fever, a lot of private vacant lands in communities have been remediated in such a way that through the method of land tax relief, such private vacant lands can be opened as parking lots. The Transportation Bureau shall cooperate with the Civil Affairs Bureau and the district offices to examine the administrative vacant lands with parking lot demands and shall also contact the private operators actively to seek for cooperation, which shall be of significant help to solving the parking issues in communities. As for the reward for private participation on the opening of parking lots, the Finance and Local Tax Bureau is requested to evaluate whether there is an incentive in the subsidy standard offered by the city government in order to provide the reward with the most reasonable method.