MBDA guiding Summerstrand Special Rates Area team

The Mandela Bay Development Agency has met the Summerstrand Special Rates Area team and is supporting their initiative, agency  spokesperson Luvuyo Bangazi confirmed on Monday.

Bangazi said because the MBDA focused on its mandate area in Central and Richmond Hill, it would not be directly involved in the Summerstrand SRA process.

“But an SRA in our view is one of the effective tools to achieve urban renewal so we did meet them to provide guidance and talk through the requirements.”

There could be a downside with an SRA, however, and this was communicated and discussed, he said.

“In the US, it has been shown that it can have the unintended consequence of creating a social divide.

“This ‘gentrification’ can mean some residents, often the elderly, can no longer afford the increased rates and they are forced out of the neighbourhood.”

Bangazi said to meet the requirements to become an SRA, certain steps needed to be followed:

• A baseline SRA requirement was that 51% or more of the properties in the demarcated area needed to support the proposal.
• Once the area has been demarcated and the minimum percentage has been achieved, the application process can start.
• Thereafter, the SRA team needs to establish a formal body that will manage the new levies, and a business plan must be drawn up proposing a certain levy and explaining how the money will be managed and used.
• This plan has to then be presented to the city’s budget and treasury department for discussions and final approval.
• This is so the city can legally add the extra levy to the monthly service bills of properties in the demarcated area and then pay the sum across to the SRA body for use on the various identified projects.

In the Bay, an SRA for Richmond Hill is already in operation and a new one for Central was approved past week.

Initiatives had also been launched in Kini Bay, Walmer Heights and Parson’s Hill, Bangazi said.