Help! Our Rates and Taxes are being wasted. - St Francis Bay Residents Association

Ratepayers Associations across the Kouga Municipal area are in agreement on one issue namely, that the Kouga Municipality is being mismanaged and Ratepayers funds are being wasted. This was the conclusion made when the Federation of Ratepayers and Residents Associations (FEKRRA) met last week. Ratepayers Associations across the entire Kouga Municipal area were united in their desire for a non political approach and are not anti Mayor Robbie Dennis in principle but will fight for good governance in Kouga. Rates and taxes must be reasonable and used more efficiently for the betterment of all communities.

Our Times was given the following explanation as to why the current anger. Sound business is based on a number of key principles that need to be observed otherwise an enterprise is bound to fail. Good corporate governance, service delivery excellence, customer care, ethical management practices, proper recruitment procedures, sound administration and a clear shared vision of where the CFO plans to take an organization critical.

Based on the above parameters FEKRRA feels that Mayor Robbie Dennis and his team are failing miserably. They feel that ratepayers, residents, potential employees, suppliers and Provincial Government have every right to feel aggrieved. A private organization can go out of business if it gets one of these key principles wrong. How can our current Municipality and our communities survive if Robbie and his team fail in all these criteria?

Good Corporate Governance. Recently we have experienced the debacle with the Valuations Role, the acquisition of vehicles, the awarding of building contracts, the non adherence to building ordinances, the disregard for proper EIA’s being done and the three damning Auditor General reports. These transgressions would be enough to result in the demise of a business that was reliant on funds from normal customers.

Take Service Delivery. Kouga roads are deteriorating by the day and the patchwork repairs that are periodically being done are not being done correctly. Nothing is being proactively done to avoid future flooding of towns and townships. Many road signs and street signs are missing or in the process of rusting off. Our sewage works in many instances do not have the capacity to deal with the volume they are supposed to service. The list goes on and on.

Customer Care. As customers, ratepayers and residents are treated like second class citizens. Appointments to see the Mayor or his officials are often cancelled hours before a meeting. Times of meetings are changed at the last minute. Municipal Officials and the Mayor on occasion simply do not attend meetings that they asked ratepayers to attend! Questions raised during meetings or via e-mail are not answered. The Mayor’s team ignores or fails to understand the eight Batho Pele principles of service delivery that are so prominently displayed in many of the Municipal offices.

Ethical Management practices. Ratepayers would like to see the mayor and his team less prone to award themselves lavish fringe benefits. The attempted inclusion of R100, 000 per annum of entertainment allowance per person on the Mayor’s executive team did not go unnoticed nor did the specification for the mayoral car. The overseas trip for Municipal Officials is simply out of place. The appointment of family members in key posts at the Municipality is bad business practice. Awarding of contracts to family and friends is a “no no”.

Proper Recruitment procedures. Would any private business recruit staff members with dubious track records, poor or no qualifications and a history of past “indiscretions”? How can officials who have transgressed in other Municipal areas simply be redeployed in Kouga? Surely this is a recipe for disaster? Is this not unfair on all hard working members of our communities that are seeking gainful employment based on performance and potential?

How about sound administration? Surely a budget that was in line with current trends and sustainable income would be a good start? Why is the budget not transparent and why is no benchmarking being done? Surely ratepayers have the right to know where and how their taxes are being used? The total lack of control of overtime of Municipal employees does not go unnoticed and is a talking point at most social gatherings. How is it possible that records are not up to date on building that is taking place? This resulted in the current debacle where numerous plots are still registered as empty erven even when homes have been erected on these sites years ago. Is this one of the many reasons why ratepayers did not get proper valuations done on their properties? Good administration is however dependant on having competent qualified departmental heads in place.

On behalf of ratepayers and residents, FEKRRA would like to inform you that ratepayers are not happy with your administration. Municipal income is not being used efficiently. Ratepayers are being taxed out of existence due to inefficiency, a diabolical budget and subsequent overstaffing. Service delivery is a problem as is the lack of answers to serious concerns that FEKRRA has repeatedly raised with your administration. As CEO you will be held accountable for lack of achievement by residents in Kouga. We would like clear commitments on what your administration hopes to achieve this year and that highlighted problems will be addressed by your administration. In short we would like to see more action and less empty promises.

Confusion still surrounds the new valuations role. Ratepayers need to understand how the new Property Rates Act works so that if need be they can lodge an objection before the 31st of March. Currently the St Francis Bay Residents Association is receiving close to a hundred e-mails a day from concern ratepayers. An incorrect valuation, particularly in this economic climate, can spell disaster for the owner who will be hurt for the next four years, as that is when the next valuation is set to be done. Over valued properties will be carrying a disproportionate amount of tax.

The response from many owners has been “if this is the value of my property the Municipality can buy it from me today”. In fact most property owners are prepared to give a 30% discount on their properties as they are way over valued! A recent study by a large Estate Agent indicates that the valuer has valued 78% of properties sold during the valuation period at 10% above the sales price! This indicates that the market trend has been completely misread.

The St Francis Bay Residents Association has found many glaring errors in the valuations done in their area. Some are so dramatic that the competence of the valuer is being questioned. Very few physical inspections of homes were done and it shows. Homes that were sold in early 2008 were valued at 30% above the price that they were sold for! Homes that have been in the market for up to three years and could not sell have been valued at up to 40% above the price that they cannot sell for! At the other end of the spectrum there are instances where houses have been erected on plots for longer than two years but they are still valued as a plot! The quality control procedures employed by the value appear to be non existent.

The poor quality of valuations is very disturbing as a lot of time will be wasted lodging objections to the valuations. Further time and money will be wasted if the valuer turns down an objection and the matter is then referred to an Appeal Board. What is disturbing is that the process by law is supposedly designed to protect ratepayers by being transparent. How can a ratepayer lodge an objection without being given access to all relevant information? Surely the valuer and municipality should make the sales information of homes that have been sold and are being used as benchmarks that set the values in an area available to ratepayers? The size of a home, location and finishes should be made available so that a ratepayer can lodge a proper well informed appeal. Currently the valuer has all this information but is unwilling to share it with ratepayers. One can obtain information about a property from the municipality but at a cost of R45.00 per home! This puts a ratepayer at a huge disadvantage when an appeal is lodged which is surely not what is envisaged in the Act?

In an area such as St Francis Bay and parts of Jeffreys Bay, many of the homes are owned by pensioners who invested in their dream homes for retirement. An incorrect valuation could spell disaster for folks with a fixed income. Like wise many homes are holiday homes and as such would be sold off in this tougher economic climate. Poor valuations could result in disinvestment in the Kouga area where our rates and taxes are already perceived to be out of line when compared to many municipal areas.

It is important that ratepayers at this stage focus on the important issue namely to establish whether the value assigned to their property is market related. This can only be done by comparing your house with a house similar to yours that has been sold in your area during the twelve month period prior to July 2008. If you have bought a home during the last twelve months and it is valued at more than what you paid for it, it is probably over valued, as the market has been in a decline. The message is do not just compare your homes valuation with that of your neighbour as his home can also be over valued. Your homes value can only be based on an actual sale in the area.

The St Francis Bay Residents Association with the help of local Estate Agents obtained all the sales that took place in the town over a two year period ending June 2008. This was the cutoff date used by the valuer in order to establish benchmark prices for homes throughout the St Francis Kouga area. These sales have been marked on an interactive map on the Residents Association website. Ratepayers can establish for themselves what their valuations should be.

Discussions with the South African Institute of Valuers in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng confirmed the following:

“One swallow does not make a Summer”. This means that one over priced sale or one sale at a very low price in an area does not set the benchmark. The benchmark is set by a taking a number of transactions into account.

That during the objection phase of the proceedings the valuer will be the person a ratepayer will raise his objections with. Only if the objection is overruled and it is decided to lodge an appeal will an independent Appeals Board be used. At this stage it may be advisable to get the help of a lawyer.

A final thought. Our Property Rates are used to fund basic services such as street maintenance, sidewalks, water drainage, beaches, libraries and the administration costs and salaries of the Municipality. If these costs are not controlled, all ratepayers will simply have to pay for these inefficiencies. It is thus very important that we watch very carefully by how much the Municipal budget is raised this year. There are currently a number of Municipal Managers and Directors that are suspended on full salaries while we the Kouga Ratepayers foot the bill. This is another issue which ratepayers will need to address in the near future. Until then make sure that your properties are valued correctly if not lodge an objection before the 31st of March.