Mbabane Municipal explains Ward 5 rates hike
MBABANE – The Municipal Council of Mbabane has given clarity on the high rates charges affecting Ward 5 residents.
This follows complaints by some of the residents that their rates were suddenly over the roof.
These areas include those along St Mark’s Primary and High schools, through to the road connecting Checkers and towards Queensgate.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the municipality, Gideon Mhlongo, said they discovered during the valuation roll review period that there were concerns from the property owners on a ‘sudden’ hike invalues. Mhlongo said the valuation roll was done in 2021 and last year, the valuation court had its sitting where property owners submitted their observations or objections to correct the roll. This, according to Mhlongo, was where they were made aware that some of the valuation increases appeared excessive and when they looked into the issue, they discovered that there was a residential area which had been rezoned to commercial use following the establishment of a number of offices in the area. Mhlongo said this occurred when Town Planning Scheme was developed around 2016.
He said those areas had been rezoned during the time when the Town Planning Scheme was developed between 2012 and 2016. Mhlongo said the Town Planning Scheme took a number of years to be developed ,between 2012 and 2016. He said when the town planning was developed, it decided that the commercial area growthshould be extended to cover the areas mentioned above.
This, he reiterated, happened in 2016 when the Town Planning Scheme was approved by the minister. “It is the Town Planning Scheme that determines the permittedland user fees,” explained the CEO.
He said the effect of the rezoning change was not felt till now because the rates were based the 2012 valuation roll until last year. Mhlongo said following the recent valuation, the areas were valued as commercial this year.
“Commercial propertiesare charged at a higher rate than residential, hence the shooting up of the property values,” he added.
Mhlongo stated that when the rate bills were issued in April this year, the properties in these areas had attracted the high rates.
COUNCIL TO ASSIST SOME
AFFECTED RESIDENTS
In light of the rates hike,the municipality has promised to work on means to assist the high number of residential families who were affected by the commercialisation of the area, thus attracting the high rates.
According to Mhlongo, the challenge they faced was that some of the residents were retired and elderly. The CEO said they would be exploring means on how best they could mitigate the effects of the latest developments, such that the rates were comparable to those paid in neighbouring residential properties.
However, Mhlongo said council’s concern was the issue of lack of participation among ratepayers in activities affecting them, especially because when the Town Planning Scheme was being developed, there was wide consultation on it.
“We had meetings publicised on comments spaces in the media, but people were not forthcoming,” he noted. Mhlongo said they were looking at exploring other means to communicate in future, including writing to individuals who were affected. Currently, he said they would be focusing on mitigating factors, following the rezoning.
He said council made sure that they sent information to the ratepayers, especially for rates, but the challenge was that some of them were absentee landlords.
“The address I have and email goes to someone else and not the property owner or tenant.”
Mhlongo said they had tried to address the matter by approaching the large property owners like government to get the database on who occupied the houses in order to improve communication with those directly receiving services from Council.
ONLY 6 800 FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS
The CEO further stated that the lack of participation among residents was equally evident when it came to local government elections.
He said even though the number of those registered for the elections this year was better than the last exercise, the figures were still unimpressive when considering the number of residents in the city. Slightly above 6 800 residents registered this yearcompared to about 5 000 in the last election year. The CEO said they were very much concerned about the lack of participation, which was very low yet people complained about about number of issues.
He said they had found their hands tied regarding the issue of participation, adding that councillors themselves were supposed to call meetings once in three months but the meetings sometimes did not take off as people did not attend. At times, he said, they combined wards which were close to each other, but still there was no impact. Furthermore, he urged people to participate and use the avenues that existed or suggest others that could be much effective.
Meanwhile, he said it was not everybody who was willing to share their email as most personalised them. He said they had a higher percentage of postal addressesfor property owners as opposed to emails.