Proposal to set up a local action committee covering Rondeberg Road Extension servitude

[Mal Morrow]

Hello people -

This is the second of my two emails.  Here I deal with the 'vision thing'.

Fighting the road has been, pardon my bizarreness, fun!  I've learned a lot about making things happen and I've learned a lot about you.  I hope I haven't pissed too many of you off with my control-freak attitude.

But all things come to an end; eventually we'll figure out how to sort out the quarry and the road.  We're not there yet, perhaps not for a few months yet; but I scent victory.

After that ... what?

There will always be another challenge in our area.  Farmers and smallholders must organise themselves in ways that city-dwellers need not.  We must consider amenities like the road, yes; but also:

• security and policing,
• rates and taxes,
• land use, departures, and rezoning,
• labour regulations and their local effect,
• other government interventions,
• land and property values,
• sharing of ideas and objectives,
• solving community problems,
• sending delegates to 'higher bodies' like government committees and Community Policing Forums,
• local development objectives, and a kind of shared approach to what we hope the area will become in the near, medium and distant future.

Please can you give me the nod to set up a convening assembly of people to establish a local action committee that might consider and discuss these sorts of things.  Here are some headings for discussion before we go any further.

Residents', land-owners' or rate-payers' association

A residents' committee would involve anyone who lives in the area, but who might not own where they live.  Land-owners' committee and rate-payers' association - much the same thing - would involve people who own the properties in the area, even though the might not live there.

I propose that we start a residents' association, with a land-owners' sub-committee some time in the future.

Initial agenda

Any of the above items, and many others, could be on our initial agenda.  In order to prevent this from getting too demanding, here is what I propose as an initial agenda:

1. Adopt a permanent constitution,
2. Pursue the quarry question,
3. Set up some sort of management and funding structure to maintain the road.

The second two items - well all of us know about those from previous discussion and work.  The first item needs a bit more expansion.  The goal is to establish the committee not to solve the second two items and then to dissolve, but to organise ourselves permanently so that future issues will automatically be referred to the committee as the permanent forum of deliberation.  At a minimum this'll require us to register a simple written constitution covering powers and responsibilities, and to elect an executive.

By accepting a permanent committee, you must be aware that it will put the community 'under rules'.  In the initial stages the committee will be advisory and representative, and won't have any compulsive powers.  So the committee can't force you to pay money, for example 8-)  But it will exist as your representative body, and this will mean that you may not always like what the committee does in your name.  Say, for example, the committee sends delegates to a quarry Monitoring Committee.  The committee must have the power to make agreements covering the quarry.  You might not like those agreements.  Obviously you can 'sanction' the executive and elect new delegates!  And hence the committee will definitely be democratic, according to its constitution, so that you can make it do what you want in a democratic fashion.

And if you agree about this?

If I get a sense that the road people think this committee would be a good idea, I'm going to do the following:

1. Write an agenda for an inaugural meeting of all residents, and
2. Set up the inaugural meeting at a time no earlier than a month from now.

Not everybody in the neighbourhood likes to write on this list, or are even members of the list.  So I'll make an effort to call people and get direction about this.

Please write back and give me your suggestions and comments.

Sincerely yours,

Mal Morrow

Land-owner, resident in portion 56 of portion 22 Zouterivier, PO Box 83, Philadelphia 7304
C: +27 (84) 9944364
W: +27 (21) 4171849
F: +27 (86) 5114459
E: malm...@gmail.com