Table View can say goodbye to the beach – the City has approved boundary changes that will lump it with Welgemoed and Plattekloof under Sub-council 3, despite a flurry of objections and petitions against the move.
The proposal by both the DA and ANC to redraw the Sub-council 1 boundary without Table View – now separated from Bloubergstrand beachfront and Melkbosstrand – drew a blistering response from the public: hundreds objected, fearing the change in boundaries would undermine community organisation and civic alliances in the area.
Resident Leon Alhadeff started a petition against the boundary change (“Table View demands number 1,” Tabletalk Wednesday October 5) stating that both options presented by the City threatened historical relationships between the community and the local sub-council office.
The two proposals for changing Sub-council 1 would both group Table View and Milnerton into Sub-council 3 with Welgemoed and Plattekloof for the first proposal, and without Welgemoed for the second.
Mr Alhadeff claimed the move would inconvenience civic organisations that couldn’t make it out to Parow, where he assumed the new sub-council office would be.
The Western Seaboard Alliance (WSA) was established to fight the plan. It comprised the Table View Ratepayers’ Association, Milnerton Residents’ Association, neighbourhood watches and community police forums from Rugby, Milnerton, Phoenix, Royal Ascot, Table View, Blouberg, Parklands and Melkbosstrand.
The WSA said the change would retard communities’ efforts to tackle common issues (“Groups unite against sub-council divide,” Tabletalk Wednesday 19 October).
The Cape Argus reported that at the full council meeting on Wednesday October 26, ACDP member Demetri Dudley said the DA would’ve lost votes if it had revealed its sub-council boundary plan ahead of the election.
Mr Dudley took issue with the splitting of wards from Milnerton to Atlantis and said the DA’s proposal, which mayoral committee member for corporate services and compliance, Xanthea Limberg claimed would help integrate communities, would have the opposite effect, especially in areas such as Blouberg, Milnerton and Table View.
Ms Limberg said there had been overwhelming public support across the city for the DA proposed sub-council boundary layout.
The plan went out for public comment on Thursday September 22 and has affected 116 wards, which have all been re-clustered into 24 sub-councils.
Ms Limberg said that during the public participation process there had been overwhelming support for option one presented by the DA, which grouped Table View under Sub-council 3 with Welgemoed and Plattekloof.
She said there had been 885 objections and 1 714 comments in support of the proposal. She said 1 279 signatures had also supported the new Sub-council 1 being located in Atlantis, which was stipulated in both option one and two.
“Of the objections against Sub-council 1, most were over the closure of the Blaauwberg Sub-council office in Milnerton. This has now been resolved. There were very few suggestions from the objectors and none of them were viable as they would have made the neighbouring sub-councils impractical,” said Ms Limberg.
Milnerton Residents’ Association (MRA) chairman Peter Walsh said the window for community consultation had been “extremely limited”.
He believes the public participation process contradicted the City’s own Integrated Development Plan, which advocates efficient planning and regulation processes as well as transparent and accountable government.
“Weareobviously disappointed. Our objections and submissions to the City were well thought out, the result of a consultative process, and were, in the views of the various organisations who attended the meeting, in the best interests of the community.”
Table View Ratepayers’ chairwoman Mandy Da Matta also feels the public participation process was flawed.
“It would appear that the proposals made by the residents of wards 107, 23 and 113 have been ignored by the City. We, as the TVRA exco, do not understand how the objections raised could have been dismissed in the manner that they have,” said Ms Da Matta. She said the City’s decision would make it hard for civic organisations to create community cohesion.
