CID Application Process

Newlands Community Improvement District, status 06/06/2024:

On 31 May 2024, the City of Cape Town approved our application to establish a CID.  This was item number SPC 07/05/24 on the City Agenda for that day.  The message below is the required formal notice to our all our property owners of this event:

SPECIAL COUNCIL MINUTES: 31 MAY 2024 – BUDGET MEETING

SPC 07/05/24 APPLICATION FOR THE DETERMINATION OF A CITY

IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT (CID) KNOWN AS NEWLANDS COMMUNITY IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT (NEWLANDS CID) RESOLVED that:

(a) the City of Cape Town determined the area as reflected in the body of the report on the agenda report as a City Improvement District (CID), known as the Newlands CID (Newlands CID) in terms of section 4 of the City Improvement District By-law, 2023.

(b) the City of Cape Town approved the application submitted by RM Turnbull, registered owner of 8 Ohlsson Way, Newlands to establish the Newlands CID in terms of section 5(1) of the CID By-law.

(c) the City of Cape Town imposed the levying of an additional rate on properties in the Newlands CID in terms of section 22(1)(b) of the Local Government: Municipal Property Rates Act (MPRA), Act 6 of 2004.

(d) a Finance Agreement be concluded between the City of Cape Town and the Newlands CID management body in terms of section 23(7) of the CID By-law.

ACTION: J JOUBERT, R McGAFFIN

Once again, sincere thanks to everyone who helped with getting our community to this point, including everyone who voted in the referendum.  

What Happens now?

• We need to set up a business to run the CID, staff it, house it, run it, and deliver everything in the business plan. Until this point we have not been permitted to even register a company to house the CID.

• Now that it has been formally approved by the Council, the Steering Committee has the authority to register a non-profit company and do all the admin that goes with that - tax compliance, VAT registration, opening of bank accounts, send out Requests for Quotations to suppliers, make staff appointments, etc.   We've been preparing, but none of this can be done before we have a registered company.

• As soon as Newlands Community Improvement District Ltd. has been registered, the Steering Committee will become the the interim Board of Directors, with the authority to implement all of the above.

• Since the first Additional Rates will be collected on July rates bills, time is extremely tight for getting a whole business up and running within less than month.  Give or take a couple of weeks, it's the same for all CIDs.

• Our absolute priority is to conclude a Finance Agreement with the City and give it everything it needs to get us on the approved list of suppliers.  Only then can we receive the money they collect on our behalf and pay for the services set out in the Business Plan. 

• The Board's second priority is appoint contractors and staff to deliver those services.  In an ideal world this would happen by the end of this month but that will largely depend on how quickly suppliers can turn around quotes and supply the services being asked of them.  

UPDATE 02/02/2024

It's official!  on 30 January, we heard from the City of Cape Town that we hit the target number of votes required to submit our application to form a CID!!

You will know that at the end of 2023 a property owners’ Referendum was held to gauge the level of support for establishing a CID in our area.  The question asked on the Referendum voting form was: 

Do property owners consent to the establishment of the Newlands CID, as proposed in the published Business Plan?

• If < 60% of property owners voted ‘YES’ then the City would accept our CID application. There are 1,653 voting properties.

• Voting opened on 28 September 2023 and officially closed on 24 January 2024.

• By mid-December 2023, we believed we had hit the target with room to spare and we submitted the digital and paper votes to the auditors.

• On 30 January 2024 the City’s audit confirmed that 63.2% of property owners had voted in favour of the Newlands CID.  98% of all the votes cast were in favour of establishing the CID.

• On 31 January 2024 the Newlands CID Steering Committee submitted a formal application to establish the Newlands CID.

It has been a mammoth task to get to this place.  The earliest emails with the City date to early 2022 and discussions were taking place with Groote Schuur CID before that.  In common with more than fifty other Cape Town Communities, we had come to the conclusion that a CID is the best way to secure sustainable funding to maintain an clean and safe neighbourhood. 

So what happens now?

• On 31 January the Steering Committee officially lodged our application to become a CID

• For the next five months the application (underpinnned  by the business plan) will make its way through various City departments, checking the numbers, and compliance with policy, ensuring that it should be a formality when it is presented to the full Council at the end of May 2024.

• Assuming all that goes as expected, property owners will be asked for Additional Rates on their July 2024 bills and the Newlands CID should receive a payment at the end of that month. 

• We will keep you posted as we go through the process.