Second dispute declared

Hennie Pauw
THABAZIMBI – The Thabazimbi Chairpersons Forum declared a second dispute this week pertaining to the municipal budget which was approved on 2 June this year.
The main objections are the total lack of consultation or brushing aside of public input regarding both the Draft Rates Policy and the Draft Budget, the result of which renders both documents illegal and invalid.
The Draft Rates Policy document, which was made available to the public in Feburary this year and which differed substantially from the previous year’s document, was never publicly discussed. According to the Municipal Property Rates Act the Draft Rates Policy must be exposed to a process of public participation, including “active engagement of the public in a process of deliberation”.
The dispute declaration states that “to this date not a single public meeting was held to ensure the public can provide input. This failure constitutes a failure of compliance to the relevant legislative requirements by the Council in implementing the rates policy”.
Three separate high court rulings were given as examples of judgements requiring public engagement in a process of deliberation.
However, individuals and representative organisations did submit written comments on the Draft Rates Policy, but none of these inputs were acknowledged, admitted or incorporated into the document.
On top of that the Draft Rates Policy was never formally adopted. The Municipal Property Rates Act requires that a Rates Policy be adopted before the budget is approved. Apparently this part of the process was skipped. According to the dispute document “no reference was made to the rates policy, no discussions on its relevance took place and neither was any questions raised about submissions made by the public on this document”.
The Draft Budget was approved in the same style. Submissions were made to the Council by the Chairpersons Forum objecting to the lack of recognized accounting principals in the budget, the absence of actual expenditure figures and the increase in the salary and total budget. None of these objections were heeded. The budget was approved without any changes to the draft document, except that a higher property rates tariff was approved.
The dispute document states that the failure to consider inputs from National Budget and the public “nullifies the approval of the budget”. National Treasury indicated in a circular that a municipal budget increase of more than 6% must be justified. Thabazimbi’s budget increased with 23%.  No such justification was presented.
In the introduction of the dispute declaration the Chairpersons Forum states that the Thabazimbi Council acts as if the South African economic situation has no relevance in Thabazimbi.
The council’s reaction to the worst recession in 50 years  is to impose one of the highest property tax tariffs in the whole of Limpopo. They act as if they are oblivious of the standstill in the residential building market, of mines cancelling contracts and of the desperate times local agriculture and tourism industries are facing.