Survey of revenue alternatives to a CID

Cape Rates Action Group

Funded by a small handful of residents, the Camps Bay Community Security Initiative (CBCSI) has for many years provided services that should be provided by the City and the State.

It promotes a city improvement district (CID) for Camps Bay in which “everybody pays their fair share”. The truth is that a single room apartment, without a view, has the same CID voting rights as a one hundred bedroom hotel on the beach front, yet their contributions are based on their respective, and sometimes flawed, municipal valuations.

The mayor correctly stated, during a CBCRA meeting, that all citizens have a right to use the beach and other facilities in and around Camps Bay.

On a typical summer weekend the number of visitors to Camps Bay can swell to tens of thousands, causing much of the grime and crime that necessitates a CID, yet none contributes to its cost.

Camps Bay is a jewel in the tourism crown of the Cape and, if it loses its lustre, individuals, companies and investors will lose out as wealthy tourists and swallows look elsewhere for their entertainment and investment.

Public entities that fail to fulfil their mandates are rewarded by a CID, which increases taxation, exactly the opposite of a tax boycott to penalise such failure.

Camps Bay and other wealthy suburbs already provide much of the revenue to support the City as a whole. Property prices are driven by investor demand, interest rates, inflation, semigration etc. and basing the cost of a CID on their value discourages such investment.

But fewer than two thousand ratepayers of Camps Bay, a mere 0.04% of the city’s population, are being asked to vote for a CID, officially known as a Special Rating Area, for Bakoven and Camps Bay but not Clifton.

While the work done by the CBCSI over many years is admirable, its current voluntary funding model may not be sustainable, but replacing it with a CID is not the only option. It may be resolved by having it funded by a company, with multiple shareholders, who exercise control by voting rights directly proportional to their investment in the company.

A decentralised organisation, entirely under the control of ratepayers, residents, businesses and other interested parties, is feasible if one adopts this shareholder model. Shares would be obtained and retained by a mandatory subscription to cover the operating costs of the company.

A paid-up subscription would entitle a shareholder to the services provided by the organization for free, otherwise costs would be charged as incurred.

Shareholders would not only include ratepayers but other entities, including restaurants, shops, tourism operators and businesses, that may not own property in Camps Bay but whose activities depend on it being free of grime, crime and decay.

Tour operators, while not based in Camps Bay, might see the wisdom of supporting such a company, and property managers, estate agents, architects, engineers, town planners, construction companies, and others that benefit from the success of the suburb, might wish to participate.

The goodwill that this would buy them, from residents and visitors alike, would be significant (and vice versa).

An alternative to a shareholder/subscription model is an advertising model, in which those that support the organization have positive marketing exposure to residents and visitors.

While one does not wish to turn the Camps Bay strip into its Las Vegas namesake, discrete use of outdoor video billboards would be viewed by tens of thousands over the summer months.

They might be used to list the contribution of subscribers to the organization in a “leader board” familiar to golf enthusiasts, to display short video adverts, safety and health advisories, the schedules and results of games being played on the beach, weather and traffic conditions, and so on.

Carefully placed, they might be visible but not an eyesore.

This survey asks the question: which of the following revenue options do you prefer:

● The rates now collected by the City of Cape Town are used to perform its mandated obligations;

● A special rates area as described in the Business Plan of the steering committee of the CID;

● A subscription and/or shareholding model as described above;

● An advertising model as described above;

● Another option as follows:

Send your opinion to the administrator of CRAG at christophersoal@gmail.com by the end of October.