POLOKWANE – The new municipal valuations may not be implemented on July 1 at the beginning of the new municipal financial year as planned.
The municipality may have to rethink its planning, as many irregularities in the draft roll and valuation process have started to surface.
One of the important aspects that may cause a hitch to the implementation of the new roll is that the Municipal Property Rates Act (MPRA) states in Article 6 (1) that “A municipality adopt by-laws to give effect to the implementation of its rates policy.”
Article 6 (2) states by-laws, in terms of subsection 1, may differentiate between different categories of properties and different categories of owners of properties liable for the payment of rates.
The new rates policy has not yet been accepted and tabled in a council meeting and by-laws still need to be formulated based upon the policy.
The South African Property Owners’ Association’s (Sapoa) Neil Gopal confirmed that it took months for by-laws to be promulgated when the correct procedures and timespan needed for each of the processes were to be followed until it was gazetted.
The process of adoption and the ultimate gazetting of the by-laws could only start after the Rates Policy had been accepted.
The Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU) had a meeting with mayor Freddy Greaver last Wednesday regarding the draft valuation roll, which is currently open for inspection to all property owners in the city at libraries, the municipal offices and the website of the municipality.
Properties owners are taxed in accordance to the market value of their property as per the municipal valuation roll and they have until May 30 to object to the roll.
According to Dawid Maree, spokesperson of the farmers’ group, the municipality’s processes did not comply with Article 4(2) of the MPRA, which stated that public participation must be taken into accountwhen compiling the valuation roll, for the rates policy.
He said some farms had been valued at double and some at three times the market value. Zoning categories such as business and industrial were applied to ordinary farms.
Maree explained that section 46(1) of the MPRA stated that the market value of a property was the amount that property would have realised if sold on the date of valuation in a willing buyer, willing seller transaction.
He stressed that the date of sale should be the date of valuation, while eValuation, the company employed by the municipality to do the valuation roll, used the values as calculated for July 1, 2014.
“Certain categories will carry the weight of other property owners. It is not a fair and equitable roll,” he said.
Maree said according to initial investigations of the roll, many rateable properties were not entered on the roll and some 30 000 properties were grossly undervalued. He said RDP houses worth R60 000 are now valued at R150 000, bringing many poor families into a category where they now have to pay taxes on their houses.
Another issue brought up by Maree was that, according to the MPRA, should a value of a property be adjusted by 10% or more, there should be a compulsory review of the decisions of the municipal valuer. The valuer must notify the municipal manager in writing and the municipal valuer must promptly submit the notice to the relevant valuation appeal board, including the reason for the decision and all relevant documentation.
Greaver asked for a working session with the TAU in order to re-look the draft policy, asking them to make new suggestions. He said it had not been tabled by council yet. “If it’s wrong, let’s correct it,” he said.
A legal opinion will also be obtained regarding the leasehold properties and the constitutionality of the municipality’s decision not to consider it for valuation and thus for them to pay or not pay taxes, Maree said. “It must be said that the valuation roll is a legal document and there is therefore a duty on the municipality to engage the valuers in terms of the MPRA. Our negotiations will therefore be with the municipalty and not the valuer.”
Rebates, discounts and agreements as made in the previous Rates Policy have been declared null and void. The new draft Rates Policy, as it stands now, would mean that certain businesses leasing properties from the municipality, would not be paying taxes, while others, privately owned, would pay taxes.
