More on the sitrep 2010/03/31 14:48

[Mal Morrow]

Hello again -

Previous email was for more general consumption, as you will see I copied it to lots of people in the Council.

This email is more informal.

For so long as the quarry remains operational - and believe me, I'm not getting wishy-washy about this, I think I'm more hardline about getting it shut than many others! - it seems necessary that we should set up and sustain better communications and information structures than we have at the moment.

So I think setting up the Monitoring Committee is a good idea.

The most important single thing it can achieve is distribution of accurate information.  It's been very time-consuming getting accurate information about the quarry, and I get the sense frequently that I'm not the first person to have asked questions, when I talk to people.  Figuring out what to do about the quarry and the road is terribly inefficient presently.  If it's properly run, the Monitoring Committee could improve matters.

Secondly, the Monitoring Committee could help to cool things down a bit.  It's no criticism of anybody when I say that the deterioration of the road has caused us genuine panic.  I can understand that people are angry and upset.  But in fact high emotion doesn't help solve problems, and can instead destroy good faith, most especially when we don't know one another terribly well.  It interested me yesterday to learn that the quarry operators blame us in the community for causing their problems.  And I'll bet that their unwillingness to cooperate about the road can often be traced back to this mutual distrust and dislike.  If we use the Monitoring Committee properly, at least we won't end up wasting precious time and resources fighting when we could be solving problems.

Finally, while I've no idea what resources the quarry can bring to bear on the proposed Monitoring Committee, I can assure you that I personally can bring a great deal of influence to bear upon it, if it is set up in the manner described by William Kingwell.  I'm Chairperson of the DA Constituency that covers Councillor Barbara Rass's Ward, and my closest political friend is the Chairperson of the Blaauwberg Sub-Council.  Transferring the Monitoring Committee to elected political oversight is a really good thing for us in the community.  Cllr Barbara Rass, the Constituency, Denise Robinson MP, and I for that matter, and the Democratic Alliance at large, will have a great deal of interest in the fortunes of the community, where Council civil servants will have much less.

I hope that's food for thought!  Please send comments - your input is essential, as always.

Tx && rgds,

Mal

[lou...@goodhorsesense.co.za]

Mal, I commend you and thank you for all your time and effort put into this. I am also extremely grateful that we have a Mal in our community. I think all will agree that this is not a job any of us would have liked to take on!

I am very amused by your comment that the quarry operators blame the community for their problems. What are they smoking? What on earth am I missing here? Please, I beg you to explain or expand on that comment?

Hello again -

operators *blame us in the community* for causing *their* problems. And

I'll bet that their unwillingness to cooperate about the road can often be
traced back to this mutual distrust and dislike. If we use the Monitoring
Committee properly, at least we won't end up wasting precious time and
resources fighting when we could be solving problems.

Finally, while I've no idea what resources the quarry can bring to bear on
the proposed Monitoring Committee, I can assure you that I personally can
bring a great deal of influence to bear upon it, if it is set up in the
manner described by William Kingwell. I'm Chairperson of the DA
Constituency that covers Councillor Barbara Rass's Ward, and my closest
political friend is the Chairperson of the Blaauwberg Sub-Council.
Transferring the Monitoring Committee to elected political oversight is a
really good thing for us in the community. Cllr Barbara Rass, the
Constituency, Denise Robinson MP, and I for that matter, and the Democratic
Alliance at large, will have a great deal of interest in the fortunes of the
community, where Council civil servants will have much less.

I hope that's food for thought! Please send comments - your input is
essential, as always.

Tx && rgds,

Mal

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[Nicki]

Thank you Mal for your calm, intelligent clear sightedness. I agree that a
clear and apparent hierarchical structure and a definite communication
system is the key to solving and overcoming problems in the future.

[Mal Morrow]

Hi Louise -

> Please, I beg you to explain or expand on that comment?

Yes I was surprised too.

While it might not seem so from our point of view, our talking to the Council and the DME seems to have forced the quarry operator to modify his plans, to work in a different fashion than he has in the past.  This has cost him.  Also, the sense I get is that the operator believes he was in the area first, and that we late-comers are trying to overturn the established way that things are done.

There's one specific way in which I am sympathetic to this: that the quarry operator is entitled to a regular explanation of our motives and actions.  So, the Monitoring Committee.

I am not sympathetic to the argument that things have been done in a certain way until now, and that they should carry on the same way in the future.  There are regulations and conditions applying to the quarry, that the operator agreed to at the outset, that have not been met.  He should not complain about this.  It ought to have been the Council's and the DME's responsibility to enforce these conditions in any case.  They did not do so.  But nothing changes their obligations just because we in the community have a greater vested interest in seeing that their obligations are fulfilled.

I am not sympathetic to the argument that the quarry was there before we arrived, either.  I believe that we are actively engaged in changing the character of our community.  I'm not embarrassed about that, I regard it as my duty to the neighbourhood - to you, indeed, to say nothing of our children and animals.  I could at another time describe to you my vision of the neighbourhood.  You might not completely agree with my own vision, but I would imagine you will share more with what I foresee than you would with the vision of the quarry operator.

In any case, the quarry might have been there for a long time, but unfortunately they are operating an industrial concern in an area that was agricultural from time immemorial.  In that sense, we can claim that they are the upstarts, bringing mining equipment into our area.

Tx && rgds,

Mal