Extract from the Agenda of the Fish Hoek ValleyResidents and Ratepayers Association. The AGM of the FHR&RA will be held on 25 February at 19:30 at the Fish Hoek Civic Centre.
The Municipal Demarcation Board (MDB) is busy with the “ward delimitation process” in preparation for the 2011 municipal elections. This announcement was made on 27 August 2009 in the local press.
Recent press coverage on the proposals of the MDB delivers the message that the FHVRRA is not impressed with some of the stated intentions.
Presently the Far South Peninsula is delimited into two Wards 61 and 69. The MDB now proposes that Ward 64 should group Clovelly and parts of Fish Hoek with Muizenberg/Capricorn. This does not make sense as there is little or no synergy between these areas which at the extremities are 12 km distant from each other! This will result in the fragmentation of both the Fish Hoek Valley and the Muizenberg communities and a dysfunctional ward, connected only via the narrow Kalk Bay/St. James corridor.
The criteria of trying to balance the number of voters in each ward must surely also take into account the practical real facts of life and a hefty helping of applied common sense. The grouping of Clovelly and all of Fish Hoek within the Far South Peninsula makes eminently more sense in terms of distinct geographic areas, sense of community, civic association groupings and local governance.
The FHVRRA has therefore, in a letter sent to the MDB on 17 December 2009, objected to MDB’s proposals and proposed that the Far South Peninsula be either divided into two wards or three wards (including Kalk Bay). These proposals result in a marginal deviation from the maximum / minimum number of voters per ward as per MDB’s directives.
There has been no evidence of the promised “consultations and participation”, to take place between August and December 2009, as originally announced by the MDB in August 2009.