Response to CID analysis

Spencer McNally, Chairperson of the Camps Bay CID Steering Committee

CID is the acronym for a City Improvement District, a non-profit entity accountable to residents of a demarcated area. Residents agree to an additional levy that is collected by the City of Cape Town and paid over to the CID to be spent in accordance with a business plan and budget approved by the City and at least 60% of eligible property owners. The process of establishing a CID is strictly regulated. It starts with the formation of a Steering Committee (SC) charged with following the legislated process. The first task is to conduct a survey to determine what the residents need and thereafter put together a business plan that must be presented at a public meeting. The public is then called upon to comment on the business plan after which a second meeting is held and property owners then vote on the proposal to establish a CID.

The SC was formed by volunteers who have all been engaged in voluntary community initiatives in Camps Bay, some of us for more than 20 years. Our members will be recognised by anyone who has volunteered in the community. We decided to form a SC because we recognised that the volunteer initiatives that were holding our community together and securing the value of our properties were no longer fit for purpose and collapsing under the strain of their reliance on volunteers and a lack of funding. Some mistakenly think that stating this self-evident truth is “volunteer bashing”, but in reality we are simply pointing out the clear evidence that volunteers will only be effective in the long run if supported by the sustainable, well-funded services that only a CID can provide.

In an ideal world, the rates and taxes collected in Camps Bay would be spent in Camps Bay as Mr Czornij demands. That sadly will not happen in South Africa in our lifetimes. In a society as unequal as ours, the bulk of the rates and taxes we pay will necessarily flow to other parts of the City that have greater needs than Camps Bay. Whilst our police station is sometimes manned by only one police officer and often has no access to working vehicles, there are parts of Cape Town where there is no policing of any description whatsoever. Mr Czornij’s proposal to protest the lack of service delivery, while laudable, is tone deaf. It has also been attempted unsuccessfully in the past.

The fact of the matter is that Camps Bay residents have been supplementing the services provided by the City and taking responsibility for our own future for decades through various voluntary initiatives. There are a number of voluntary guarding and camera schemes for example. In addition, CBCSI is a voluntary scheme that currently contributes massively to the safety of the area. All of these schemes suffer from the same problems – namely the fact that more people benefit than contribute and that they are run by volunteers whose excellent work cannot always be relied upon. We know this because the SC members have been volunteering in these schemes for years, and have seen numerous other volunteers burn out or leave the neighbourhood (or, in some cases, sadly pass away). In that sense, the only novel aspect of the CID proposal is that it creates a stable income for these schemes and ensures that everyone who benefits shares in the costs. This also enables us to improve on the schemes currently have in place, increasing the number of armed response vehicles, increasing the number of cameras and coordinating their monitoring, expanding the cleanliness and social upliftment schemes that already exist.

Mr Czornij complains that the CID presentation at the public meeting was “fear inducing”, but he concedes that the photographs in the presentation were of actual cleanliness and homelessness issues taken on the same day of the meeting and that crime statistics show a steady increase. Moreover, as mentioned in the presentation, the fact is that CBCSI will cease to exist by the middle of 2024. The presentation was a realistic account of what is happening in our community and most residents are quite rightly concerned.

The criticism that the survey process was not transparent is entirely without merit. The survey process was overseen by the City of Cape Town and an extremely detailed description of the process for conducting the survey is contained in the survey results available at campsbaycid.org. More than 880 property owners completed the survey, making it the most comprehensive poll of Camps Bay residents ever conducted. There simply is no merit to the suggestion that the results of the survey do not represent the majority of residents’ genuine concerns.

The question is simply how to address these concerns. If, like Mr Czornij you believe that government can be pressured into providing the levels of service you expect, if you are prepared to volunteer to keep the community safe and clean, if you are prepared to be in the minority of people who voluntarily fund such initiatives, and if you are prepared to protest for better service delivery, then you should vote against the CID and start doing those things. We’ll leave it to the reader to assess the credibility of Mr Czornij’s assertion that this is a viable solution, bearing in mind that Mr Czornij does not currently volunteer for major community organisations such as CBCRA, CBW, CBCSI or Ignisive.

All of our neighbouring communities have decided that the best way of tackling our problems is to implement a CID. Our Camps Bay CID would not only implement measures to secure and maintain Camps Bay, but it will implement a professional, properly funded, community-centric management entity that will maintain relationships with the appropriate City officials to ensure that we get the best service possible from the City. In that way, the CID would substantially achieve the same thing Mr Czornij suggests that “making demands” on government will.

A detailed business plan and budget has been put together by the steering committee in consultation with the City. Our members include ex CEOs of major international businesses and current and ex trustees or chairpersons of major South African NGOs. We consulted with professionals in various industries and the management of neighbouring CIDs to obtain recommendations on how best to achieve what residents asked for and we allocated budgets to each line item. Our work has been checked and queried by the City. We remain open to respond to any constructive comments on the budget. Mr Czornij misrepresents the plan when he says that we plan to spend R900 000 per camera and he has yet to provide us with comments on any aspect of the business plan or budget.

Mr Czornij also falsely refers to “40% of residents who voted against the CID”. There has been no vote yet, although to date more than 80% of the 1 200 individual property owners who have expressed an opinion have indicated their support for the CID proposal. He also misrepresents the presentation made by the CID steering committee when he says that the process for forming the CID is not clear. The legislated process is described in detail in documents on our website, and at the public meeting under the heading “What Happens Next” we described the process culminating in voting expected soon after October 2023.

Finally, his generic comment about questions being raised on accountability, governance and transparency are uninformed. All questions raised in writing with the steering committee have been personally answered and in many cases also published on our website. The CID by-law implements an extremely onerous process that guarantees accountability, governance and transparency and allows the City to step in at any time if the CID fails to deliver.

If the CID is approved, no one will be “locked in for life”. Any member of the community can stand for election to participate in the management of the CID or call for its dissolution and there are statutory mechanisms for dissolving the CID in a variety of circumstances, including the failure of the CID to meet its obligations.

At the end of the day, residents face a very simple choice. Do you believe that government has the ability to provide the services that we need in Camps Bay? Or do you agree with the steering committee that paying R87.69 per month per million of property value (less than R35 per day for the median property) for R30 000 000 per annum of public safety, cleanliness and social upliftment services, professionally managed and controlled by residents of Camps Bay, is excellent value for money?

As volunteers involved with various community initiatives for decades, the answer is clear to all of us on the steering committee. The CID proposal is the only hope we have of arresting the disturbing trend towards lawlessness, filth and social dislocation in our community.