Some questions which we have been asked about the SRA proposal........ Why are you doing this? The Association believes that we have to move to a more sustainable solution in our neighbourhood watch. We believe that if we as a community can take charge and control how our area is managed and how funds are spent on security particularly, we will get more value for the money we spend, and achieve better and more cost effective solutions than if we operate as individuals. Your committee are all home owners like you and feel passionate about making sure that our area maintains the lifestyle and property values which made us all move here and invest our hard earned money. Is the additional levy over and above what we are already paying for our security, SACAN and Gillitts Park membership? Not at all, the additional levy replaces this expenditure, with the specific exception – if you are paying off hardware installations on your property, you will need to honour this. Typically house owners presently pay monthly for security (+/-R350), SACAN (R 90) and Gillett’s Park membership (R 35). If you live in a house of value R 1.5 million, the SRA cost would be R400 which would replace all these costs. We have considered special arrangements for people who (a) cannot afford these additional rates (e.g. pensioners) and (b) home owners whose high value of the house would result in them paying a high contribution. Will one security company look after us if this comes into effect? Due to the size of the area, certainly for the time being, we believe it is your prerogative to keep your current service provider. However, we are in the process of formulating agreements with Blue and Enforce who hold the majority of clients here. We will encourage residents to support these companies as they have worked with us through this whole process and were the only two companies to return expressions of interest when we started out. It makes good business sense for all of us actually as we get a good deal and great service, and they get a good deal and enough support to make it worth the effort. How will we manage this relationship? We have placed the emphasis and expenditure on area, street and boundary security, turning focus onto prevention rather than reactive security measures. This will involve setting up a control room and office within our area. We will ask Blue and Enforce to tender for this as only one company can be held accountable. The losing company will continue to look after their clients, at a good rate. If the SRA goes through then the security companies would invoice the association based on the number of clients they have, and we would pay this invoice as long as we have the contracts on file. I do not have any security company looking after me so this cost is much higher than I can afford/are willing to pay? / I like my current service provider. Once we have finalised our agreements then we would reimburse the monitoring portion the figure for this (determined by Blue and Enforce), to these home owners on a quarterly basis. This can then be used to top up whatever they are paying other security service providers, or to support their own budgets. I don’t trust Ethekwini! Ah well! There are currently 7 SRA’s in the Ethekwini region and all of them report that they are working well, so it isn’t as if we are trying something new. The municipality is just providing a collection service for our community, without any transaction fee and this saves administration and collection costs for us. Please explain the proportional rate and why can’t we pay a standard amount? SRA’s only offer a proportional rate which is then applied to the municipal value of your property. They (and we) are governed and protected by the property act under this system. The rate is determined by dividing the total municipal value of all properties in the area by the proposed budget for the year period. To work out how this then applies to your property – you multiply the fraction into the municipal value of your property and then divide it by 12 to get the monthly figure. This is then added to your municipal bill. If the majority of home owners prefer a standard rate then we have to look at agreements and debit orders where home owners support the initiative. This will only work if everyone does this – or at least 80%. It is feasible and works in an area of Umhlanga Rocks very successfully. How do I know that the Gillitts Park SRA Company will be run properly? We have a number of business people in the area who we have called upon to have a watching brief over this. The Area Manager will be selected by this body and report into this body as well as the main committee which is elected by you. The books will be audited and available for inspection at any time. Ethekwini also demand regular reports so act as a guardian of our money also. Why was Camp Road, Tudor Road left of the “footprint”? We were advised to treat this area as a special project due to the number of complexes in these streets. Time restraints have made it difficult to do this for this year’s application, but they have not been forgotten and we will be talking to everyone living here with some solutions in the next week or so. Why was Valerie Drive, Neville, Dovehouse and linked cul- de- sacs left off the “footprint”? Valerie Drive is supportive of this project, just their street leaders were not in the country when we had to make this decision. The rest of this valley has not been active from the neighbourhood watch perspective so we will focus on them next year if they are interested.
Posted on: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 09:03:44 +0000
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