St Francis Bay Residents' Association Newsletter September 2011

Folks hi... thought it was time to give an update on recent goings on and progress....

Short summary

• Not much obvious progress but lots going on in the background.
• SFBRA meets with the new Mayor, frankness and honesty but little promise of improvement.
• Municipality broke and dysfunctional, but some accounts get paid, potholes being fixed.
• Financial future looks bleak.
• Legal briefings vindicate SFBRA strategy.
• Nigel Aitken arrives on scene to fix pot holes.
  

Long Version

Well, as agreed at the AGM we have set up a permanent office, recruited a full time (half day) manager for SFBRA, Jacky Green, have a new committee member in charge of finance, Paul Pezzaro and moved the admin. to new offices ......... all this took place by end April and those who were able to attend the Easter feedback would be up to date up until then.

Further we undertook a shift in strategy in dealing with the Municipality from direct confrontation/threats of withholding tax to a legalistic approach where we would attempt to use the power of the several Municipal Acts to leverage action out of the Municipality.

Since then several key events have impacted on our lives, notably the hiatus before the Municipal elections, and the hiatus after the elections. During this time we have got a new Mayor, the Financial Officer has been fired as usual...suspended on full pay pending an enquiry) and the same for our Municipal Manager (fired but appealing). Progress on Municipal matters ground to a halt during this period. The Municipality ran out of any money for anything with nearly all service providers not being paid. The Riparian canal levy was not paid, the electrical contractors were not paid, the beach contractors were not paid and there is no money for the tar for the pothole menders to use (so they sat around playing cards or bunking work). Many reports were received of some contract workers not being paid and pension contributions not being paid.

With the appointment of the new Mayor and the suspension of the Municipal and the financial managers, things showed an immediate improvement but as yet no one knows exactly where the money suddenly came from.

The rains then descended on St Francis and washed away our bridge and opened up wide spread potholes.

We at the SFBRA were not as inactive as it may appear.... apart from routine maintenance, attending to queries and enquiries, assisting with residents' issues, we have during the hiatus period, had lots of briefings with lawyers, written lawyers letters, arm wrestled with local government and council and had meetings with new officials. Admittedly however, there is not much we can show for these efforts at this stage.

Sad, bad news is that little is well in the state of Kouga....... We recently finally had the new Mayor visit us in St Francis...for us to put our case to him .......the meeting was a success only in the frankness of the conversation. As with the rest of governmental admin in RSA today, there is no relief or cure in sight. The current Municipality has only two of its Directors that are not in acting positions...the key roles of Municipal Manager and the Financial Manger have incumbents in acting positions. The council is broke. The budget will lead to a further R100million loss if current trends are not reversed. The budget in its present state was forced through the council by the ANC majority despite dire warnings by the DA. The issue here is that the budget assumes 100% collection of rates and taxes across the entire Kouga region and this figure has been falling massively over the last few years. We are not able to determine the exact real collection figure due to there being no one able to answer our queries nor anyone who actually knows, but we have heard from a fairly reliable sources that last year was about 80% but this year it is currently down to around 50%.

Joe Oosthuizen passed away in June and will be immensely missed by all. Joe was uniquely connected in this area and had incredible sources of inside information. It will take ages for us to recover to this previous state, if ever.

A major point of disagreement with the new Mayor was that we demanded more bang for our buck in St Francis, noting that we were only 5% of the population but were responsible for 20% of his revenue and we wanted more representation as to budgetary allocation and priorities afforded to St Francis. Here the Mayor attempted to stand firm, insisting that the current ward system was sufficient and adequate and working.....utter and complete ideological rubbish!....

We will however push harder for a better working Ward Council system and hold our Councillor Ben Rheeder to task for ensuring our priorities are attended to. Currently Ben does attend our monthly SFBRA meetings but the feedback is simply insufficient and unsatisfactory at this stage.

We believe that St Francis is sufficiently significant enough in the Kouga area to demand special attention, quick response and resident involvement in Municipal decisions. We have not been privy to these in the past but in the future will use all the power of the law to leverage this......... including squeezing our ward councillor if necessary.

We have also sought new legal advice and have met with advocate Graham Richards, previously Municipal Manager of Port Elizabeth before he was removed from office in an ANC pogrom. (He took the ANC to court and won handsomely...) Graham must be the most learned and experienced legal source in RSA today on how Municipalities work, think and how the law impacts on residents and Municipalities. A vindication of our strategic shift is the confirmation by Graham that using the powers of the Municipal Acts is the most certain way of getting the attention of any Municipality especially as the Acts do provide for prosecution of Municipal officials in their personal capacities for misdemeanour and even consequence of bad management. Although these things are often very difficult and painstakingly long to prove in a court of law, they are however sufficient enough deterrent to get serious attention.

The drawback of the legalistic route is cost. We believe it will ultimately prove to be the most effective but it is going to use up much of our war chest funds. We have been advised that once the Municipality realise that we are going to use the teeth provided by the Acts, then we will get the attention we deserve.

We have been urged and are being continuously urged by many well meaning members to use other approaches... eg the national consumer council, the national public prosecutor, the national treasury, the MEC for government affairs, use of withholding rates and taxes, etc. We do take these suggestions seriously and have written many letters/emails to many governmental departments... to date we have very little to show other than a forensic audit driven by Joe Oosthuizen's insistence for some years at provincial level. This forensic audit has yet to be released although as we understand, it has been ready for nearly a year. We are now about to take legal action to force the release of this report and will pursue the prosecution of officials named in it for corruption and fraud.

The winter/early spring period in St Francis is when many committee members leave town on their annual pilgrimages to wherever. This is, therefore, a bit of a quiet time for the driving action oriented committee you appointed. Luckily we have a new 'member' onside, a new arrival to the permanent population of St Francis, and to the SFBRA, Nigel Aitken. Nigel has extensive experience with Municipal matters up north and has come on board with a burst of energy last seen in Joe.

He has already taken charge of the team fixing our potholes and showing much needed obvious progress. Welcome Nigel.

The next step is the framing of our issues in a letter to the Mayor, as agreed in the meeting. The backlog of issues is now so large that prioritising is essential. Problem here is too many issues will result in the Municipality just throwing up their arms.... but prioritising is more difficult than you can believe given the completely different value systems of committee members let alone residents.

Don't hold your breath for too much action here from the Municipality, but we have to take issues one step at a time. The key step of framing our requirements for involvement in a legally sound manner has already started but will take some time to prepare.

Hope this brings you up to date...for further or specific queries please contact Jacky on 042 200 1404 or contact@sfbresidents.org.

Mike Simms - Chairman