NRA to keep the community informed

Madam – The comments of the Mayor in response to the Ratepayers’ Associations letter, published in the Advertiser of 17 October 2014 refers.

The Mayor accuses the Association of hypocrisy but in fact he is conveying a blatant lie by leaving the impression with your readers that he is meeting with the Association on a regular basis. The fact of the matter is that the Association had a meeting with the Mayor ONCE and that was during 2009 and thereafter he refused to meet with us because he did not like us confronting him with relevant legislation to which they are not complying with.

It is not the responsibility of the Association to resolve the Council’s mistakes and non-compliance of applicable legislation. We believe we have a legal right to study Council issues and to respond to matters which are of concern to us. Unfortunately it is common cause that matters referred to Council and it’s management are ignored and/or never submitted to Exco and Council for their information and/or consideration. It is quite obvious that the Mayor does not understand what was meant at the time to consider a holding budget, simply to have a budget in place until the final document is approved. In any event it was not pursued and the fact it was on the table did not result in an adverse audit report which has become the norm for the past four financial years. Surely not something to be proud of.

Typical of the Mayor, rather than recognising the flaws in the administration of the Municipality he reverts to offensive language and insinuations. By doing this it is obvious he is steering away, or demonstrating his ignorance of the fact that, regardless of his trimming of expenses, the total operation budget increased by R 475-million since 2012/2013 which includes a substantial increase of consultant fees for which R 33-million was provided for the current year. Not very encouraging towards the people who must endure rising tariffs to finance such budgets.

With regard to the Mayor’s comments on Draper Street, we wish to highlight the following information which will facilitate any investigation. Council approved R 4 629 432 for the project. On 31 January 2014 the progress report stated that the total approved cost was R 6 144 331 of which R 1 220 356 was paid out to consultants while R 4 923 975 was for capital costs.

At that date the report stated that R 5 470 089 had been spent which included R 500 008 in respect of a variation order leaving a balance of R 674 242. According to the progress report the progress was 86 per cent complete but subsequent damage occurred to the road resulting in major repair costs and all this considered, there could possibly have been an over expenditure. It was for these reasons that this Association requested the total costs. The Mayor’s comments were uncalled for in this case.

Over the past financial year we addressed 117 letters to the Municipality (which included comments on Budgets, Policies, IDP submissions, and other cases where the Municipality had called for comments from interested and affected parties) and not the almost 10 letters per week as stated by the Mayor.

Each letter touched on very important matters pertaining to the administration of the Municipality be it in respect of financial, technical, legal and other matters with no response and which should have been a matter of concern for the head of the municipal administration (the Mayor) and we are pleased to note that he is supporting the Association’s resolution to bring the sad state of affairs to the attention of the Minister of Cooperative Government and Traditional Affairs.

We will keep the community informed of the outcome of this action.

Thank you.

Newcastle Ratepayers’ Association.