The NKRA is grateful for the support provided in the 4th Street park by our park sponsors RUSSELL FISHER PROPERTIES and VISION TACTICAL SECURITY and the KILLARNEY MALL, and for the street cleaning services provided by RCS SECURITY SERVICES.

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NKRA Communique – October 2022

Hi everyone

We held our second virtual public meeting over the internet at 18h00 on Wednesday 2 November. Only two people joined in. We will hold our virtual meetings at 18h30 from now on, to see if that might enable more people to participate. Our next virtual meeting will be at 18h30 on Wednesday 7 December. All owners and residents of Killarney-Riviera are welcome to participate. An agenda with a meeting link will be circulated closer to the meeting date.

The recent extended water outage was ridiculous. From what we can gather, some Joburg Water technicians closed a valve somewhere for some reason, and then they all searched for the problem for about 48 hours until somebody finally “discovered” that closed valve. Once again we have been reminded that we cannot depend on the municipality to provide even the most basic of services. Many buildings already have large tanks on the roof which provide an uninterrupted water supply. However residents therefore don’t notice when the water supply is cut off, and they continue to use water as normal until those roof-tanks are empty. The roof-tanks are not very big, and so that supply doesn’t last very long. We therefore urge all residents to obtain and install personal water tanks, with enough capacity to provide for your individual water needs for several days. Electricity inverters are also becoming essential, but they are much more expensive.

As the recession continues to worsen, it is becoming a problem for many tenants to pay their rent. They don’t want to lose their home, so sometimes people try to subsidise their rental by leasing out a “spare” bedroom to a third party – often to a total stranger. Some tenants even move out completely and rent out the entire flat to a third party, without the owner’s knowledge, and perhaps even at a profit to themselves. In order to maximise their receipts, they sometimes allow serious over-crowding in the flat, to the detriment of the rest of the building. Sometimes the legal tenants (or their third-party lessee) might use the flat for the purposes of running a business, and this could create serious legal and security and insurance implications, as well as serious inconvenience to other residents due to the extra noise and traffic.

Depending on the wording of the lease, the tenants might not be prohibited from doing this. If you are renting out your unit, it is advisable to ensure that your lease agreement contains very clear wording on the issues of utilisation and sub-leasing. However even with a well-worded lease, evicting illegal occupants from your flat is a very difficult and expensive legal exercise, especially if the occupants include small children. It is therefore essential that you (or your rental agent) visit the property regularly to keep up to date on what is happening inside, and that you have good lines of communication with the trustees and the security guards.

We do still see the municipality doing repairs on pipes and cables. However while the municipality is usually quite good at digging up the streets and pavements to repair pipes and cables, they are usually very slow to reinstate the surfaces afterwards – apparently due to budget restrictions.

These uncompleted excavations pose a significant safety risk to pedestrians. It has therefore been suggested that we should again repair all the pavements ourselves. However we have been told that the municipal cable-repair process is not yet complete, so if we resurface the pavements now, they might be dug up again in a month or two when the municipality finally comes to complete the job. Once we get the all-clear from the municipality, we will certainly consider such a repair project. Meanwhile, please walk and drive very carefully.

For all municipal service delivery issues, including potholes, pavements, Pikitup, electricity and water issues, you can contact the municipal Call Centre on 0860 562 874 to have your concerns forwarded to the relevant operational departments. Please would everybody keep on reporting issues, and always ask them for a reference number – if you don’t get a reference number, the service might not happen at all. Please also take photographs of the potholes and/or damaged pavements etc, because the municipality seems to respond slightly faster when we include photos to support our complaints.

While we wait for service delivery, we continue to ask all buildings please to help us in managing the visual appearance of our suburb, by cleaning up litter and weeds on your pavements and in your gutters. Please would all buildings continue to persevere with this – a handful of weeds on a pavement causes a disproportionate amount of “negative optics”, while a small pavement flower bed adds disproportionate amounts of positive value.

It seems to be generally agreed that we should purchase additional clean sand to top up the sandpit in the playground area in the park. The main purpose of the sandpit is to provide a soft landing for anybody who falls off the jungle-gym, but the smaller children also play in the sand as though they are at the beach. The park gardener sweeps that sand twice a week for litter and leaves, but soil washes in every time we have heavy rain, and small amounts of the sand are lost continually through sweeping and through ordinary play activities. We will need to acquire at least two cubic meters of new playground sand, which will cost about R6400, including delivery. We will also obtain some bags of the special salt which is mixed into the sand to help manage bacteria etc. Unless there are substantial objections, we will proceed with this project. We will however wait a few more weeks to give other members time to give feedback on this proposal.

Following a request from residents, we researched adding a smaller slide onto the main jungle-gym structure, to accommodate the very small children. We have obtained a quote for R25,000, from the people who built the original playground structure. We consider this to be a very expensive quote for this small addition. There has not been much support for this investment so far, but we will wait a few more weeks to give other members more time to respond. Meanwhile, other ideas and designs will be researched. We can get fiberglass slides for a few thousand rands, but they might not be sufficiently robust.

There are many homeless people living on the motorway embankment. The Council is well aware of this situation, but legally they cannot relocate the homeless people away from the area unless they have safe alternative accommodation available for them somewhere reasonably close by. The various government homeless shelters in the Johannesburg area have limited capacity, and per our Ward Councillor, they are currently all full.

As usual, the security situation is getting worse as we get closer to the festive season. Snatching of phones and handbags on pavements is particularly serious, and the snatchers often have a car loitering close by to help them get away quickly. All residents need to be aware of the people around you on the pavement at all times. Please also watch out for “prowling” cars – the thieves favour Uber-type vehicles, and it is easy to assume that a slow-moving car coming toward you is merely a harmless Uber searching for their waiting customer. Most important of all, try not to have a phone or device in your hands when you are out on the pavements.

Visible policing seems to help, so we recommend that buildings try to have a guard outside on the pavement, especially in the rush hours, to provide a presence and a second pair of eyes when residents are engrossed in their phones. More floodlights in dark areas would help a lot, and buildings might consider putting up signs in foyers or lifts reminding residents and visitors to be cautious of any people walking near them on the pavements.

There is currently an idea on the table to boom off the few blocks of “Southern Killarney”, being 8th Street, 9th Street, 10th Street and 3rd Avenue. If you live in those buildings, please would you get involved and participate in those discussions?

The owners of the Killarney Mall have confirmed that their impending renovation will definitely incorporate a taxi facility. The research and planning has already begun, but the project will take more than a year to complete. No specific timelines are available yet at this early stage. The municipality has confirmed that the Mall will need to incorporate a proper taxi facility into any further development in order to get municipal authorisation for any such development.

This year we had 39 buildings out of the 55 sectional title buildings in Killarney-Riviera as contributing members of the NKRA – this is about 71% of the total. The current list of the members for 2022 is as follows:

  • Berkeley Square
  • Beverley Heights
  • Biarritz
  • Brenthurst Court
  • Bretton Woods
  • Canterbury Close
  • Chartwell
  • Chelston Hall
  • Christina Court
  • Cranwell Hall
  • Daventry Court
  • Devon Place
  • Dumbarton Oaks
  • Earls Court
  • Gleneagles
  • Glenhof Gardens
  • Greenhills
  • Hampshire Mews
  • Hyde Court
  • Interlaken
  • Killarney Court & Gardens
  • Killarney Hills
  • Killarney Park
  • Killarney Village
  • Kingsborough
  • Knightsbridge
  • La Camargue
  • Mentone Court
  • Monviso
  • Park Avenue
  • Portofino
  • Rapallo
  • Riviera Mansions
  • Riviera Villas
  • Santa Margherita
  • Sevenoaks
  • Splice Riviera
  • The Rivieras
  • Whitehall Court

Many thanks indeed to these buildings for your on-going support. Thank you also to the various people who make personal donations as well.

The invoices for the 2023 financial year will be sent out at the end of February.

Please would the NKRA members give us feedback on the various issues described above, and especially on our proposed playground improvement projects? We are happy to receive photos of any interesting things around our area, which we might include in future newsletters. We also welcome all suggestions from all residents, on all other issues as well.

Best wishes to all, keep well, and keep safe.

Wayne Ford