W’aria Municipality fires back at allegations

Westonaria Local Municipality chief financial officer Vincent Mkhefa does not take lightly allegations that the municipality is using residents as a cash cow and fires back with comment.

This comes after the herald reported that AfriForum in Westonaria was up in arms over the manner in which their properties were evaluated and felt that the municipality is making them pay more than they are meant to pay with regard to the implemented 40 per cent tariff increase.

According to Mkhefa the municipality followed the proper procedures in evaluating properties.

“In respect of the methodology used to prepare the general valuation, I wish to refer residents to section 45 of the Municipal Property Rates Act No 6 of 2004, which states that the municipality must value properties in accordance to generally recognised valuation practices, methods and standards. One of the provisions of the Act states that comparative, analytical and other systems or techniques may be used including aerial photography and computer assisted mass appraisal systems or techniques.

“With that being said, I can confirm that as the Westonaria Local Municipality, we did not do physical inspection of each property but we performed a comparative analysis of the market in a particular area,” says Mkhefa.

He adds that the community should be aware that the municipality is not the one that performs this valuation but an independent person is appointed and does the process on the entity’s behalf. He explains that the person doing the valuations determines the market value of properties based on the market prices around the area.

“If residents in that area have sold their properties at a high price in the past 12 months, this affects the values of properties in that area. So as the Westonaria Local Municipality we tend to use the statistics on the recent sales when it comes to determining the market value of one’s property. In respect of houses in a dolomite area being valued, the general valuation includes all properties as registered in the deeds office.

“The geological status of the property influences the value of the property. If there is a market in the dolomite area it will reflect in the statistics and that will influence the value of properties. For instance, if someone sells their property for R500 000 in Venterspost, this will affect the market value of the properties around that area.

“The community should be aware that market value means all arms-length transaction that has been registered. The market value of one’s property is determined by the value that his or her neighbour sold their property for,” says Mkhefa.

He has since fired back on allegations that the municipality is billing residents for vacant stands as well such as swimming pools and says that such a sentiment is completely wrong.

“One of the procedures the valuers perform when they prepare the general valuation roll is to obtain the latest information from the deeds office. Therefore they prepare the valuation roll from the information they obtained from the deeds office. If the swimming pool is located in a separate property from the main house and the owner did not consolidate the two, both properties will be valuated separately,” says Mkhefa who urges residents to report their property queries to the municipality for clarity and assistance.