Naivety and inexperience in real world finance, engineering, etc, which is what I thought of Vd Merwe's explanation.  I doubt the city's professional engineers, quantity surveyors and accountants or their consultants, if they were asked about these politician-imposed-from-on-high suggestions, systems and procedures, would come up with such complicated remedies. But cadres always seem to. That tells us a lot about them. 
'The city that works for you' should be changed to: 'The city that works hard to waste your [ratepayers'] money.'