Valuations – update July 2010.
Joe and Paddy were invited to a meeting with the Appeal Board to state the case of the Residents of SFB and Kouga in general. Joe explained that the Valuer did a shocking job of the valuations and provided the Appeal Board with facts and figures to prove this. The Appeal Board mentioned that a request had been made by the FEKRRA for a Committee to be formed that would assist the Appeal Board and support the residents and Mr. Songo wanted to know how this Committee planned on doing this. The Chairman of the Appeal Board, Mr. Songo said that the approval for such a committee had been submitted to Bisho and that he expected an answer within about 3 months. JO and PO were of the opinion that this was pointless at this late stage as it would just hold up the Appeal Process. JO stated that this request had been made over a year ago. JO did however request that the Appeal Board favour the residents even if their Appeal was not based on market value pricing.
PO mentioned that several residents who had followed the Appeal process to the letter, had not been allocated a slot at the Appeal Board Hearings. Mr. Songo assured her that everyone who had Appealed, would be heard and should they not be able to attend their Appeal Board hearing, it would be done without them. JO mentioned that he was aware that Mr. Gerber and his team had a difficult task trying to accommodate everyone, but that several residents were due to suffer serious financial consequences as a result of these valuations and were anxious to have the situation rectified.
JO asked Mr. Songo how the Appeal Board planned on rectifying all those properties (not featured in the Appeal Process) that were 33% over valued or 33% undervalued, as the Mayor had undertaken to rectify this. Mr. Songo said that this did not form part of his mandate and that it should be taken up with the Municipality. When asking Peter Gerber (representing the Municipality) how it would happen, Mr. Gerber did not have the capacity to deal with this!!!
FEKRRA
Yet again the Municipality have not honoured commitments made to FEKRRA. Click here for unanswered questions. Click here for Minutes of last meeting with KM. These questions are going to be re-asked for the 3rd time at a meeting scheduled with the Municipal Manager on 19th July.
IMPORTANT
A Public Meeting will be held on Friday 23rd July at 18h00 at the Village Hall (to accommodate PE property owners) to discuss unresolved issues with the Municipality and possible action to address this, to include declaration of a dispute, withholding of rates and taking over the Management of certain aspects of the town. The SFBRA feel that this is a huge but beneficial step, but in order to make this happen, we need support from the community. We need at least 10 people who are prepared to get involved and assist in running the village. This is a huge amount of work and cannot be done by a few members of the committee. Tenders will be sought and everything will be outsourced, but a Management Team will be needed to take the decisions and do some administration work. Supervisors will also be required to check on the contractors. If we do not get the support of the Residents to assist in this matter, then all attempts to try and get the Municipality to improve service will be stopped, as it would then be seen as a pointless exercise.
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