(Est 1950) Alphen Centre, Constantia Main Road PO Box 68, Constantia 7848 tel/fax 794-4388 e-mail cpoa@yebo.co.za www.constantiapoa.co.za SPEECH BY HELEN ZILLE MAYOR OF CAPE TOWN, made at the Annual General Meeting held on the 15th. November 2006 I am honoured to join you for your annual general meeting. Before I discuss any other matters of governance this evening, I would like to speak to you specifically about an issue that I know many of you are concerned about. That is the issue of structure plans that are awaiting approval with the City council. I realize that there is a lot of frustration and concern about delays in the finalization of applications for two structure plans in particular. The first of these is the Constantia Village Triangle Structure Plan, which is intended to formally prevent commercial developments from spreading outside of the existing zone that has been set aside for business. I understand that the trust has spent R250 000 of its own money on putting together this structure plan, that it was submitted to council and approved by the Planning and Environment Portfolio Committee (PEPCO) in 2003, but that it never received the necessary executive authorization from my predecessor, Ald. Nomaindia Mfeketo (who said she had better things to do). Your chairperson, Ms Hemming, has rightly asked why the plan has not yet been processed given that it has already been approved by PEPCO. I have followed this matter up, and have found that the answer is twofold. Firstly, the Structure Plan has had some changes made to it since it was first approved by PEPCO, and so these changes needed to be re-looked at by the committee. Secondly, the Constantia Village Triangle structure plan will need to be workshopped in the subcouncil first before going to PEPCO, which will then make the formal recommendation to the Mayoral Committee for the plan to be approved. That is because when we entered government, we introduced a new set of delegated powers in the City council that moved certain key decision making powers to subcouncils, so that decisions could be made from the ground up, rather than the Mayoral committee acting in an ivory tower. While this new way of doing things has brought governance closer to the people, and will ensure better planning decisions, it has also created some temporary delays while we get the system into place. My colleague, Cllr Neil Ross did succeed in getting this item onto the PEPCO agenda for last week's meeting, but the ANC successfully argued that from a strictly legal point of view it must first go through the subcouncil. Earlier today the plan was presented and discussed at a meeting of the Southern Peninsula subcouncils, and I am told it should be approved by March next year. I apologize on behalf of the city for this delay, but rest assured that we do consider this to be an important matter, and we will see it through with due haste. I have been told that in the meantime PEPCO has voted against applications for commercial ventures falling outside of the existing commercial triangle, and will be mindful of the pending structure plan in any future votes that may come up on this issue. The only exception is an application for a medical practice, which is currently under appeal by the Barbarosa Ratepayers Association. The second structure plan that is awaiting finalization is the Constantia/Tokai Structure Plan. I have been informed that this is particularly aimed at preserving the historic farms in the valley and the unique character of the valley. It is also aimed at preventing the realization of certain major development proposals that have been put forward on some farms. I fully agree that we need to protect the unique character of this valley. I also support your initiative to have the winelands declared a Unesco World Heritage site. Constantia will be a key part of that since it is one of the birth places of this piece of our heritage. Currently Mr Richard O’Donahue from the City is co-operating with Mr Fabio Todeschini on a submission to have the Constantia Valley Winelands declared a Grade 1 South African Heritage site. As in the case of the Constantia Village Triangle Plan, the overall Constantia/Tokai Structure plan will be going through the approval process shortly so that we have a management plan to present to Unesco. In the meantime, you do have the power to appeal against any developments that you are unhappy about, and under the new delegations doing so will mean that the matter will go to the subcouncil for full consideration, to ensure that the final decision works in the best interests of the community. We are also working to find ways of mitigating the factors that are motivating farm owners want to sell their land for development. I understand that the farms of Constantia are being taxed on their potential, not their actual output. So for owners who are not commercially utilizing their land, this is acting as a major incentive to sell. As most of you will know, in order to tackle this issue, Cllr Ross has facilitated a special meeting between the city treasurer and the Constantia Property Owners Association in order to look at the way the farms are rated. That meeting is to take place on Monday the 20th in Mike Richardson's office on 7th floor in the Cape Town Civic Centre, and I sincerely hope that a constructive way forward can be found. We have much work to do in other areas as well. A number of services to ratepayers are in need of a serious overhaul. Many of you will know about the problems we have with road maintenance and electricity infrastructure around the City. Many of you will also know about the lack of capacity in the metro police and the fire services. I am well aware that the Constantia area also has specific problems with sewerage management. The already overloaded pump station and sewerage line near the Alphen Hotel has been flooding with storm water when heavy rainfalls occur, resulting in the discharge of sewerage into open spaces and private properties. The City has money in this year's budget for a new pump station to be built in addition to the existing one. But, ironically, in terms of new National Environmental Legislation, an EIA has to be carried out for the pump station before it can be built. We are currently working on the EIA, and construction is expected to start from July next year. These problems are symptomatic of a broader decline in services and infrastructure in Cape Town over the past years. Infrastructure investment and maintenance have failed to keep up with economic and population growth, and have failed to address the fact that many of our facilities are ageing. I am very mindful of the seriousness of this situation. These problems have a direct impact on economic growth in the city, and also damage the attractiveness of Cape Town as a place to live and invest. This situation is partly the result of the political turmoil that has characterised the last decade of government in Cape Town. It is also the result of a major shift in the structure of municipal government in the region. In the year 2000 the Cape Town Unicity was formed from a merger of 7 smaller municipalities. It is now an organisation with 21 000 staff members, an R18 billion budget, and 3.5 million residents to serve. Unfortunately what should have been a very carefully managed transition turned into a poorly handled restructuring process and a political purge of about 2000 experienced staff by the ANC between 2003 and 2005. The result has been chaos. There are anomalies everywhere. People doing the identical job in different areas get different salaries. Some people are not sure who they report to. And some staff members get paid to do the same job. At the same time, the City's capital expenditure on infrastructure and services sank to around 60% per year for the past three years. This is disastrous for efficiency and disastrous for morale. We are working hard to address this problem, and we anticipate that service delivery will be greatly improved if we succeed. We have already introduced a new top management structure, whose task will in turn be to resolve problems in the structures below so that eventually all of our staff members are operating in a functional organisation. We are also introducing new priorities in our expenditure on staff. We are going for fewer personal assistants and support staff in executive suites, and more nurses, librarians, firemen, street sweepers, policemen, technicians and engineers. All of this, of course, takes time. And it is, no doubt, frustrating to hear that you will have to wait still longer for some of the basic problems to be solved. My excellent colleague, Cllr Neil Ross, is your direct means of communicating your concerns with the City. For now, though, I will open the floor to questions, so that you speak to me first hand. |