How municipality determines charges

THE process of determining the General Valuation Roll usually takes about five months to complete.

This is according to Nelson Mandela Bay rates and valuations deputy director Roelf Weyers.

The process started on July 1 and ended on November 30 last year.

In 2008, the municipality sent valuers to properties to determine the value, but this cost R87-million to complete.

This time, the municipality looked at the market value of houses, aerial pictures of properties and building plans to determine a valuation.

It cost only R12-million to complete the 2017 General Valuation Roll for Nelson Mandela Bay.

“This was possible as we kept the system fairly up to date,” Weyers said.

Once the valuation process is complete, the rates can by determined. According to Weyers, a number of factors come into play then.

“Heading into the new financial year the accountants came to me and said, ‘Roelf, you need to collect R2.1-billion in rates for us’.”

He said all non-rateable properties had to be removed, different property types had to be factored in such as residential, industrial or commercial, and a certain number of objections would be filed.

“Only once these and some other variables are taken into account, can we calculate the rates tariff.”

After all these variable factors, the residential rate tariff was calculated at 0.011129.

Residents had the opportunity to object to their rates and following the implementation of the new rates tariffs the municipality received 3 778 objections.

“We are in the process of handling these objections and have set ourselves a timeline to have them all processed quickly,” Weyers said.

“At this stage, we believe all objections would have been processed by mid-November.”