Mayco member acts like a municipal worker shop steward
UNLIKE those employed by the City of Cape Town, I am a pensioner whose income is fixed. I am also a ratepayer at the mercy of a rating system that punishes home owners who improve their properties over the lifetime of their mortgages.
As a result, my gorge rose on reading the response of mayoral committee member Johan van der Merwe to the rational criticism of the City Council whose instant response to poor economic conditions is to bump up the rateable value of property and thereby top up the city council coffers (and the salaries of those laughingly called municipal servants).
The reason for my anger is this: I bought a rundown wreck of a house 30 years ago and then slowly, out of my own pocket, faithfully restored it, checking all the boxes of Heritage rules and the demands of the Byzantine city planning department (rules incidentally ignored without penalty by my immediate neighbour).
Looking forward to a comfortable retirement, I was shocked and angered when the Council decided that my property had so increased in value – thanks to my efforts – that the rates I must pay should be doubled. I protested, of course, but to no avail. Instead, I was rebuffed by a pre-printed pre-signed rejection letter. Clearly, no one bothered to visit the property.
And why should any municipal servant get off his or her derrière when a computer had deemed the increase valid?
And, indeed, on investigation I found that the Council had spent two years carefully modifying a computer programme used in Canada to assess property values. This was apparently necessary to take account of local conditions.
Also apparently necessary was to send a delegation of Cape Town Council servants to Canada to see the system in operation – and no doubt to have a few days off for shopping – at ratepayers’ expense.
Mr Van der Merwe is an elected official placed there by voters, but he speaks in a language eerily similar to that of a municipal worker shop steward.
His response to Ms Myburgh was a mealy-mouthed justification of the 27 000 staff (not including contractors) of the Council, and a claim that the “Council is constantly testing whether expenditure on staff is yielding value for money…”. And “cost-cutting and curtailment exercises are vital operational aspects...”.
What nonsense, as anyone who has had dealings with the Council knows. Under DA rule the number of staff has ballooned by an additional 6 000. Keith Bryer Kalk Bay