NKRA Communique – January 2025

Hi everyone

Happy New Year! Best wishes to all for 2025!

We held our January NKRA public meeting via the internet on Wednesday 15 January 2025. The key issues arising from that meeting are included in this newsletter. Our next NKRA public meeting will be held at 18h30 on Wednesday 19 February 2025. All residents and owners of Killarney and Riviera are welcome to participate. An agenda with a Microsoft Teams meeting link will be circulated in due course.

Clean drinking water is a precious and scarce resource, and we cannot turn a blind eye to any avoidable wastage thereof. In addition to its scarcity, the wasted water can also cause damage to infrastructure, including exacerbating potholes and washing sand into storm-drains. If you notice a burst pipe or other water-related issue, please report it urgently to Joburg Water on 011 688 1699 or to fault@jwater.co.za. You can also report a water leak to the municipality’s 24-hour hotline – 0860 562 874.

We are happy to report that the municipality is busy doing a large number of water-pipe repairs in Killarney, particularly along 4th Avenue. Unfortunately, they often don’t reinstate the road afterwards, and these various incomplete road repairs pose a significant danger to motorists, cyclists and pedestrians. The JRA usually leaves these holes for a few months to be “compacted” by vehicles, but as the rain washes away the soil, the holes become dangerous, and cars try to avoid them, so the intended compacting doesn’t happen.

It has been proposed that residents should top up each of these dangerous holes with loose rubble and stones, so as to eliminate the immediate danger, and to allow cars to resume actually compacting the soil in the hole. If you have a dangerous hole near your building, please would you top it up with loose rubble, to improve the road safety in the short term.

The Community Upliftment initiative and the “Themba Cleanup Projects” are going very well, and are adding a lot of value. The more money we can fundraise for these projects, the more projects we can undertake. Planned future projects include fixing potholes and regular cleaning, as well as pressing the municipality to clean-up on the embankment, and particularly to prune those trees. We are also asking residents to submit suggestions for cleaning and weeding projects, or for any other type of upliftment project. If you are interested in helping with these projects, you can join in at: https://chat.whatsapp.com/KA4ejvnpF6pGjFg9SJ3KEn.

The pilot planting of veggies in the park by the NKRA Community Gardens project has been very successful, and a “winter garden” is now being planned. This will require additional labour and additional compost. We are also encouraging more buildings to create small food gardens on their pavements. Some residents have suggested planting additional fruit trees in the park, where we already have some substantial avocado trees. Lemon, pomegranate and fig trees have been suggested. If you would like to join this value-adding project, you can contact them at: https://chat.whatsapp.com/Cjh3eJl57pv1XcoQ7OEBj9

The NKRA project to repaint the street names on the kerb-stones has been completed, but we are waiting for all the mosaic signs to be finished before we do the final corrections. This will include doing a full inspection to ensure that all street-names are correct. All residents are asked to contact us if you notice any spelling errors or other problems.

We cannot rely on City Power to fix the streetlights, so we need to illuminate any dangerous dark areas ourselves. Many non-functioning street-lights have been identified and reported to City Power, but their response is slow. We are therefore planning a new NKRA project, to identify a handful of particularly dangerous dark areas, to create a plan for each, and then to approach the trustees of the nearest buildings with customised plans and costings. This will initially include the 7^th Street car-park area, the 4^th Avenue bridge and the high-traffic Riviera Road pavement outside Daventry Court. All suggestions are welcome please.

The small “Anerley Park” needs constant attention, in particular clearing of the weeds before they spread. Various gardening efforts are taking place, and more volunteers are needed please. The replacement of the stolen steel fence along the highway inside the park is on hold, but residents are busy planting donated Kei-apple trees along that fence-line. We would also welcome the donation of cuttings of succulents, in particular. We ask the community to make suggestions for the future usage of the Anerley Park, because if it stands empty and neglected then it will continue to attract dumping and metal-theft.

We have received official municipal authorisation to install the art gate by James Delaney in the park at the 4^th Avenue entrance. We still need municipal authorisation to install the existing park gate into the fence on the embankment, and it is too risky to proceed without clear municipal authorisation. We will continue to pursue this with City Parks and Zoo.

Illegal hawkers, and the illegal drinking on pavements, are social problems which will not go away by themselves. Residents need to constantly report issues to the municipal call centre, get reference numbers, and escalate this to the ward councillor. It helps a lot if we can include photographs. We will continue to report these problems at the Community Policing Forum, which is the official communication channel between communities and the law-enforcement bodies. JMPD does sometimes attend the CPF meetings, but they keep rotating the officers who attend, so building a relationship with JMPD has been slow and difficult. There is an on-going risk of cell-phone snatching on pavements, and pick-pockets. We will continue to press at the CPF meetings for increased visible police patrols in our area.

The Community Street Patrols are ongoing, and these patrols are adding good value. Trained security officers accompany the patrols, to add skill and to call in an armed response service if needed. The Community Street Patrollers have no authority on the street, but they are proving to be quite effective in discouraging various forms of anti-social behaviour, such as the pavement drinkers and revellers, many of whom are Killarney residents. You can contact the Patrollers at: https://chat.whatsapp.com/DsR92XsjIU49JLvv1pAHCI

Vision Tactical Security have patrol cars in Killarney, and they are willing to react to all reports of criminal activity. If you notice any suspicious behaviour, you can contact the Vision Tactical control room on 084 222 2222, or on 010 972 2600, or on 061 071 2001. The two Vision Tactical response vehicles are on 072 830 5305 from 8am to 10pm, and on 071 570 5173 from 10am to 10pm. We thank Vision Tactical for this community-minded service.

There has not yet been any new feedback from the Killarney Mall owners this year on the Killarney Mall refurbishment project. Our efforts will continue. The problems caused by the illegal parking in Killarney Avenue will again be emphasised at the CPF meetings.

The municipality has amended the property rating process, in the search for more revenue. They are allowed to reduce the Section 15 rebate in cases where an owner owns more than one property in Johannesburg. In some of our older buildings, the staff room or parking space may have its own separate title-deed, and some of these cases are now being billed as though the owner has two properties.

The Johannesburg municipality will be conducting a city-wide audit of electricity and water meters in residential estates and complexes in the city. Municipal officials often struggle to gain entry to complexes to take accurate meter readings, which they claim undermines their ability to produce accurate municipal statements. They have appointed Omnitell Tech to conduct these meter audits from January to December 2025. The authorised audit teams, when visiting a complex, will always:

• Display City-approved identification;
• Follow strict security and access protocols;
• Operate during standard business hours (08:00 to 17:00); and,
• Comply with every complex’s security requirements.

Anybody who wants to verify the authenticity of an audit team or raise queries can call the City of Johannesburg call centre on 0860 562784 and select Option 2.

During 2024, 41 buildings out of the 55 sectional title buildings in Killarney-Riviera were paid-up members of the NKRA – this is about 74% of the total. The list of the members for 2024 were as follows:

• Berkeley Square
• Beverley Heights
• Biarritz
• Brenthurst Court
• Bretton Woods
• Canterbury Close
• Castlerosse
• Chartwell
• Chelston Hall
• Christina Court
• Cranwell Hall
• Daventry Court
• Devon Place
• Dumbarton Oaks
• Earls Court
• Glenhof Gardens
• Greenhills
• Hampshire House
• Hampshire Mews
• Highbury
• Hyde Court
• Interlaken
• Killarney Court & Gardens
• Killarney Hills
• Killarney Park
• Killarney Village
• Killarney Wilds
• Knightsbridge
• La Camargue
• Mentone Court
• Monviso
• Park Avenue
• Rapallo
• Riviera Mansions
• Riviera Villas
• Santa Margherita
• Sevenoaks
• Sloan Square
• Splice
• St John’s Wood
• The Rivieras

Many thanks indeed to all these buildings for your on-going support, and also to the various people who make personal donations as well. We are grateful for this support, which enables us to undertake small projects for the benefit of us all. The invoices for the 2025 year will be sent out at the end of February.

The motto of the NKRA is “Safer, Cleaner, Better, Greener”. If you have any specific ideas and suggestions to help us implement this vision, please do share them urgently. Otherwise, our primary focuses for 2025 will continue to be as follows:

• Managing the squatter and hawker and taxi and street-drinking problems in Killarney;
• Reducing the various crime risks, including specifically the risk of pick-pockets and phone-snatching on the pavements, and improving street-lighting;
• Building up a sustainable Community Street Patrol;
• Building up a sustainable Community Gardens Project to grow food;
• Undertaking community projects where possible, including various approaches to cleaning and beautifying the pavements and other visible public spaces, expanding the existing Themba Clean-Up projects by means of additional fundraising, and improving relationships with the trolley-recyclers.

We are happy to receive photos of interesting things that might be happening in our area, which we might include in future newsletters. We also welcome all inputs, on all issues. All interested persons can contact us at wdford@global.co.za to be added to the mailing list. Our website is at www.nkra.org.za.

Our next public meeting will be held at 18h30 on Wednesday 19 February 2025. All owners and residents of Killarney and Riviera are welcome to participate. An agenda with a Microsoft Teams meeting link will be circulated in due course.

Please would you share this newsletter with all your neighbours in Killarney-Riviera?

Keep well, and keep safe.

.

City emergency hotline on 011 375 5911

If you get no response from the patrol van, please call 10111

Councillor Huggett – by SMS or WhatsApp – 071 785 8068

JMPD call centre hotline number – 080 872 3342

JMPD Control Room – 011 758 9620

JMPD number to report Homeless People camping in the vicinity – 011 490 1538

JMPD number to report Illegal Dumping – 011 490 1684

JMPD number to report Noise Pollution – 011 718 9684

JMPD number to report Illegal Advertising – 011 490 1547

JMPD number to report Illegal Trading – 011 490 1744

JMPD number to report other By-Law issues – 011 490 1684

To report a water leak: 24-hour hotline – 0860 562 874 or 011 688 1699