rates hike fury mounts
12 March 2008

Thousands of objections, including those from almost an entire Durban neighbourhood, are expected to flood municipal offices as fury over council's market valuations and rates increases mounted.

Claims that the council and city manager Michael Sutcliffe had misled the public have flooded the Daily News, with angry ratepayers claiming their rates will now increase from between 100% and more than 300%. Entire neighbourhoods are now also preparing to lodge objections to their market valuations, including whole streets of residents in the Manor Gardens area above Glenwood.

Their calls of "not fair" have been joined by those of disgruntled Kloof, Westville and La Lucia homeowners, one of whom has recorded a monthly rates increase of R2 500.

Manor Garden resident Colin Rogers said Sutcliffe's comments on the property valuation process could be "best described as disingenuous". Both he and the Manordene Residents Association have compiled a list of at least 60 residents who have found fault with their valuations. On the list is a former chief property valuator, who served the municipality for 32 years.

Deputy city manager in the treasury, Krish Kumar, said only about 1 600 objections had been received and predicted that the flow of objections would subside as people recalculated their rates.  "We will respond to objections. We have had calls from people who have wanted to withdraw their objections and believe a lot of panic was caused by people using the incorrect rate randage," Kumar said.

The Democratic Alliance has meanwhile promised to dissect the draft budget, but has already slated the R0.009 rate randage figure.

"This is almost double the draft randage of Johannesburg and coupled with the hyper-inflationary 9.9% water increase and 15% electricity increase will cause many ratepayers across the city severe hardship. We are convinced the budget conceals a lot of political padding and 'nice to haves'. We are confident that by eliminating these we can bring the randage down to alleviate the burden on residents," DA caucus leader John Steenhuisen said.

Sutcliffe said he "resents" allegations of having misled the public, saying he had always said that council's entire rates base would increase by about 10%.

"Every time the city moves from one system to another there will be an impact. Obviously the rates for some people will go up. In some case there are these discrepancies because people have been paying far less than what they should have, while others have paid too much."

Heinz de Boer, www.dailynews.co.za