Shortlists for the positions of Director of Planning and Chief Financial Officer at the Municipality have been drawn up and interviews will be conducted soon, Municipal Manager Dean O’Neill confirmed at Wednesday’s Mayco meeting.
Deputy Mayor, Lindile Ntsabo confirmed that law enforcement and its K9 team had conducted searches of school busses on various routes in the Overstrand. This follows reports that drugs were being sold on the busses. Ntsabo said no arrests were made but they were aware of drugs being thrown out of the windows of busses before they were searched.
Municipal Manager Dean O’Neill confirmed that SALGA (South African Local Government Association has reached a deal with municipal trade unions on a 4.8% salary increase effective from the 1st of July 2024. This will increase to 5% from February 2025. O’Neill said this was within the 6% budgeted by the Municipality and part of a 5-year deal reached with the unions. Ed. This is besides the 2% notch increase municipal officials get automatically and takes the increases well above inflation.
The new DAFF minister (Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries), Dion George is expected to visit the Overstrand soon to have talks about harbours and slipways in the region. Apparently, government would like municipalities to take charge of slipways.
Mayor Rabie told Mayco that problems with unfunded or underfunded mandates such as libraries continued. She said the Municipality was currently receiving some R8m from the province to run libraries but that it cost R12m to do so. “We are supporting libraries beyond our mandate. We’ve been waiting for 20 years for the province to build a new library so that we can have our office space back,“ the Mayor said.
The Municipality has started work on a new tourism strategy for the Overstrand. Municipal Manager Dean O’Neill told Mayco that they are currently looking for a suitable service provider that could help them draw up the new strategy. Following that, a new tourism manager will be appointed. The previous manager Frieda Lloyd recently left the Municipality for the Overberg District Municipality. The Mayor agreed that it was time to “seriously revisit” the Municipality’s tourism strategy. She said what they had been doing up to now was basically public relations. The Mayor also raised the question of how to pay for the tourism offices. She said she felt that the tourism offices should be given to the hospitality industry to run. “We can’t do it in terms of present legislation, but we want to outsource that service. Our tourism strategy should be linked to economic development.” Rabie said the Overstrand should be thinking of an office at the Cape Town International Airport or the CTICC. “We need to think bigger than just running a PR office.”
MMC Clinton Lerm concurred and said the private sector should be driving tourism. He said he would also like to see larger companies in the region with marketing budgets coming to the party to assist the Municipality.
The Mayor then wanted to know whether the Municipality had a policy on Air BnB’s? Councillor Lerm said there were over 900 illegal AIR BnB’s in Hermanus. He said they hoped to have a strategy in place by January next year. He said the Air BnB’s were definitely “eating into” the rental market when it came to middle class housing.
At Wednesday’s meeting the Mayor reiterated that there will be public participation processes for the De Mond and Yacht Club sites once the Municipality receives a site plan from the developers. The Mayor said the public participation processes were not negotiable and would take place. Mayco decided to recommend to council the approval of both the De Mond and Yacht Club sites. The only deviation was the lease term for De Mond, which was limited to 45 years. This includes the two years provided to Point Caravan to plan the development and get the necessary permissions. Councillor Elnora Gillion was the only one questioning some aspects of the two tenders. One of her questions related to Point Caravan “targeting rent from sublets” during the initial 2-year period. Anja Kotze from the Municipality’s property administration said yes, Point Caravan would receive rent during this period but that they would also have to pay for services. “They need money to pay for that.” The Mayor said the matter of rentals and the payment for services would be dealt with at a later stage.
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