Regarding the article in the Tribune today regarding Morningside, the paper decided to only print a few lines of my response to them. Please see below my full response to residents and to the Tribune on these matters: Good morning. Thank you for your e-mail. I share the frustration of the residents as I too have been struggling since 2012 to get results from the city. But let me start of by copying the e-mail that I send in reply to the one you refer to above, as many of the issues are addressed in it: Good afternoon all. Again apologies in not replying immediately. I am sure you understand that in a ward of this size, the amount of e-mail traffic and the work load is quite high, and I do try and get to e-mails as fast as possible. E-mails like these that requite detailed answers take some more time, as I have to go back, and get all the correct info as to get the best possible answers. I also want to again encourage people to ensure that the correct information is given when e-mails is sent, as I am still concerned that information is sometimes not accurately conveyed. Again thank you for your community spirit and care for the area. It is still much appreciated, as is the work done by many other residents in the area. Some of the questions you ask have been answered to you before, but I am happy to give the info again, as it is important that everyone involved has this information. But before I get to your points, let us first look at what has been achieved in 2013. 1. The railing on the island between the two lanes of the road have been upgraded. The old dangerous railing was removed, and a new, better looking one, was installed. 2. Bollards was put up to stop cars from driving on the sidewalk. 3. Some overgrowth was indeed cleared. 4. Problems with some of the light poles where fixed. 5. The storm water drains where cleaned and cleared, leading to better water flow during the rains. 6. The concerns lower down in Woordford grove and other roads where looked at. The rubble was removed, and some engineering done. 7. The water flow was investigated. It was found to be natural spring and not be coming from a burst pipe. This having been said, a lot of work still needs to be done, and I look forward to continue to work with everyone involved to achieve more results. So let us now go the the list: 1. House 94. This have been explained to you before. This house was occupied illegally. When the Real-estate department found out about it, they decided to Regularise the situation. This meant that the city undertook some work on the house to make it liveable, and am now collecting rent on the property. The situation is thus totally legal. If there are any specific concerns, regarding the people living there that you feel the city should take into consideration, you are welcome to contact the real-estate department or myself with these concerns, and the department will then investigate. I just need to point out that, by law, councillors have nothing to do with rentals of property. This is to prevent corruption from public representatives. I do however still have oversight powers if there are specific concerns, so please bring these to my attention. 2. I agree with everything you say here. Unfortunately my attempt to start a community garden here failed, for many reasons and I take responsibility for this. As this is part of land belonging to the roads department, I will address the open pieces of land together below. 3. I am not sure if I am confused, as a bollard was put up after the big walk-about. Are you referring to another spot where a bollard should be erected? 4. Let me address all the open land issues here. I fully agree with you, and still share in concerns and frustration. I did a quick count, and now stand on over 24 e-mails regarding this after our walk about. Promises where made by officials on that day that has not been delivered. I have today e-mailed the head of the Engineering cluster that oversees the Roads department, and the City manager to ask for their urgent intervention. I will feedback once I have received a reply. The matter regarding the squatter, I have given feed back to you previously. As he has now been staying there so long, it is not a simple matter to remove him. The roads department reported to me that they have handed the matter to the citys legal department for advice and action. There is not much I can do to speed up that process. It is however part of my regular e-mails to the Roads department to continue following up on it. 5. The Electricity faults department reported to me that hey have fixed those lights on two occasions now. I share their suspicion that someone that prefers the dark to hide their activities sabotage these lights (not very hard to do unfortunately) to further their business. I have reported it broken once again, and have asked they look into a different system for those lights that are not so easily sabotaged. If the lights go out again, I ask that it be reported to 0808313111 or [email protected]. They must then give you a ref. number and I will ask that you then send this reference number to me to follow up if nothing has happened in 48 hours. 6. Reported to parks department, and as I typed this I received their reply that they will look into it. 7. I refer you to point 4. 8. Approval was initially given to fix the pavement out of a fund specially allocated to the ward. The project was then halted as the engineers then learned that Percy Osborne road is targeted for mayor roadworks. As I explained to you, the engineers want to change the road drastically to make it safer. This includes possible widening the road, or even shifting the road a bit east (towards the ocean side). The department thus felt that it would not be prudent to spend hundreds of thousands of rands on fixing the pavement if the new pavement will just be dug up in a few months. A project like this is a mayor capital expenditure, and must thus be included in the budget as approved by council. The engineers are looking at options and doing the costing. They then apply to the Treasury, that then decide if it should be included in the budget. The budget is then sent to council of approval. The budget meeting sits in April thus only then will I know if the project is definitely going ahead or not. If it is in the budget, it will happen in the 12 months between May 2014 and April 2015. If not I will re-apply for the pavement upgrade. 9. See point 4. I hope this brings some clarity or the above matters. I will continue to follow up on these as I have been doing. Then some good news that I hope will also help to improve the situation. I have negotiated with the city on the expansion of a project that I hope will have a big positive impact on the road. The city has certain Special Zones that look after security and infrastructure in those areas. The divide parts of the city into certain zones and appoint a manager to these zones that co-ordinates all city services in these zones. These are mostly tourism areas. I negotiated for the part of our ward targeted (lower Morningside focussing on the stadium) and this zone will be extended up to Windermere road. To give you an idea what this means - If any of you go to the city centre or the beach, you will sometimes notice security guards with green sleeves and an eThekwini logo. They are employed by this project to give extra security to these zones. In practice this means that the area will have a one stop person for all our concerns that will then co-ordinate with all the departments to address issues. It also means that these green sleeve guards will at times patrol the area to increase security as visible policing is still the best tool. I have discussed with them the prostitution and drug problems in the area, and this will be targeted. This project will hopefully start in February. It needs approval from council to go ahead, and council sits on the 29th of Jan. I have had two meetings with the lady who will be the manager, and she is already aware of all the concerns. Only once the council has approved it, will it be able to start functioning. I can assure you I will be voting yes for this in the meeting, but I can not guarantee that the council will approve this, but I am confident it will go through. I will let you know what happens at the meeting. Again, I want to thank all included here for your continued and active participation, and look forward to another year of working with you to improve the community. There is a lot of work still left to be done, but I remain confident that we will achieve the goals set out before us. As you can see from the above e-mail, it has been a frustrating time with some headway being made, but the mayor issue of the open land still being a big concern. It is not true that I have not being attempting to assist the residents. Since these concerns where brought to my attention, I have had numerous meetings on site with the residents who have send this e-mail to look at at these issues. I have had 3 onsite visits with officials. The last onsite visit was a mayor walk about with multiple city departments present. The residents in the e-mail above joined us at the walk about and also aired their concerns to the officials. Afterwards the road was a hive of activity and a lot of work was done to improve the situation. But as I have stated above, due to the slowness of the roads department to act on their promises regarding the open land, many issues remain. Let me now answer your questions directly: 1.? Where are your offices? 65 Overport drive. 2. How can residents who have issues in the ward contact you? The best ways are either telephone or e-mail. As councillors spend a lot of time in meetings, e-mails or sms are the best ways to contact a councillor. My phonenumber is 0787298768 or e-mail at [email protected]. The residents above and I am in regular e-mail contact as well as one on one contact. But I get communication from residents via e-mail, phonecalls, twitter, facebook and whatssapp. 3. If people want to report something wrong in the neighbourhood, how do they go about doing it? It is important to keep in mind that councillors are not the first port of call when there is problem to report. If there is an issue, residents are encouraged to contact the city. With engineering issues, like roads, sidewalks, water each. the number is 0801313013 or e-mail at [email protected] or sms 0837073013. Electricity faults are reported at 0801313111 or [email protected]. The residents will receive a reference number. If there has been no action after 7 working days, then the residents can contact their local ward councillor with the reference number and the councillor will then will follow up. If it is a bigger structural problem like above, then residents can contact me directly. 4. What kind of complaints do you get from the residents that you serve? In a ward as diverse as this, the complaints vary greatly. The ward has a wide variety of areas that include council flats where people are struggling to make ends meet right up to multi-million rand homes. Issues I dealt with in the last week include the lack of service delivery by the city for Westgate gardens, the council flats in the area, the ongoing fight regarding derelict properties, noise pollution (as Florida road is part of the ward, this is a regular one), engineering issues, housing concerns, traffic calming measures and many others. 5. What issues are you currently dealing with? This was answered above. Currently I am also busy putting together another on site tour with multiple city departments to visit the derelict properties in the ward to assess the situation with them, and look for possible solutions. Residents, the local CPF and the Save The Berea group are included in this tour. There are some big concerns at the council flats and I am working to try and get the city to resolve that as well. 6. What have you done with the complaint to assist the residents? I have copied my reply to their e-mail for you above. In addition to that I can also say that I can not even count the number of e-mails send to various departments that I have send to bring these issues to the various officials. I visit the area myself regularly, and have had onsite visits with officials and residents as stated above. Currently I am putting as much pressure as I can on the roads department as the issue regarding the open land, that belongs to this department, is the key to many of the problems faced. I have been promised answers on why there has been such a delay and a plan of action by next week. 7. Do you try your level best to assist residents who come with complaints? Yes. This is a very large ward , with many different issues. The job of a councillor is to monitor service delivery, and to intercede for residents where needed, and it is very often needed. Councillors are still however dependant on officials to render the service. It must be remembered that councillors have no direct power over an official. No councillor can order an official to do anything, but can meet and negotiate with officials. Whereas I find most officials to be very helpful and ready to serve, it remains an ongoing issue that some services are not rendered optimally. I can thus say that within the above limitations, and limitations put in place by budgets and other similar issues, I have tried hard to address the above issues, and many of these issues have indeed been addressed, and some remain to be dealt with. I am also aware that I too have my short comings, and I am always willing to learn and grow as a person and a councillor. I have learned from this specific experience that communication is key, as I have not always fed back to all the residents involved the actions I have taken to help address their concerns. I hope the above is sufficient. If more info is needed you are more than welcome to contact me. I want to thank you and the City Watch team for this opportunity. Martin Meyer
Posted on: Sun, 02 Feb 2014 18:03:46 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015