Makhura to get updates on valuations
• Gauteng premier reminds municipalities in his jurisdiction of his power to step in where property owners are unhappy
The City of Johannesburg and the Gauteng department of co-operative governance will give joint weekly updates to Premier David Makhura about the property valuations in the metro. Makhura said he would be receiving the progress reports on resolving the property valuations debacle, which has led to a broad outcry from residents.
The City of Johannesburg and the Gauteng department of cooperative governance will give joint weekly updates to Premier David Makhura about the property valuations in the metro.
Makhura said in an interview he would be receiving the progress reports about resolving the property valuations debacle, which has led to a broad outcry from residents.
The revaluations, some of which increased 100%, sparked fear about unaffordable hikes in property rates. Makhura said he did not want to wait until July to know what the extent of the issues were.
He called on the city’s residents to understand that the Municipal Property Rates Act allowed them to lodge complaints if they were unhappy with the valuations of their properties. If they were still unhappy after this, they could then appeal to the provincial independent valuation appeal board, which would be set up through the co-operative affairs department, mandated to oversee and monitor the implementation of the act.
Makhura met Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba on Friday to discuss the valuations, after having expressed concerns about the issue.
The mayor said he had been “inundated” with complaints from businesses and ratepayers in the city about the overvaluation and undervaluation of their properties.
Mashaba has announced that the city would revalue 8,000 properties following the outcry.
The city revalued all housing and commercial properties in its administrative jurisdiction in 2017. Mashaba said last week that many of the properties identified as problematic had received valuation hikes of more than 100% and the city would take up the fight for the owners.
Makhura said, however, that the scale of the error in the valuations was not yet known, but he believed the 8,000 properties could just be the “tip of the iceberg. I … want to make sure that the city corrects every single one of those properties that may have been overvalued.”
He said residents had a “very real reason” to raise an issue with the valuations. He would be meeting businesses, residents and ratepayers’ associations in coming days.
Makhura said the mayor and the city initially had a “dismissive attitude” towards the property owners who had raised concern. He said that if Gauteng residents were not happy about something, he became the next appeal authority.
“Mayors need to know that if something goes wrong in their municipalities, I will intervene,” Makhura said.
Luyanda Mfeka, Mashaba’s spokesman, said the city had worked to be responsive to the needs of residents since the start of the valuation process, and that was why the mayor intervened. He said the city believed it had a productive meeting on Friday on this matter, wherein the premier was satisfied with measures it had undertaken.
He said the mayor and the premier committed to jointly working towards an efficient, responsive and fair property valuations process for the benefit of residents.