My Visit to a South African City Council Meeting Today

The GSE Team returned to our "normal" GSE Team duties after a welcome few rest days.  Today was a vocational visit day, and B.J. and I had the opportunity to visit the Overstrand Municipality, with the Director of Planning and Infrastructure.  We had an intersting morning learning about municipal government here, which was a nice comparison to the City of Capetown that I visited in the past 2 weeks, since Capetown is so huge.

Overstrand has a population of 70,000 - 80,000, over 800 municipal employees and includes 11 different town areas under the umbrella of the municipality.  Some of the notable items about Overstrand include its coastline (over 200 kilometers) and its location between the mountains and the ocean, making it very environmentally conscious.  Because of the beautiful surroundings, the area's population can swell to 300,000+ in the vacation seasons of Christmas (summertime here) and Easter.

Our hosts, Steve and Henri, were very welcoming and discussed their occupation and responsibilities with us, including management and planning for the municipal water, wastewater, electricity and transportation systems.  We learned about the water conservation that Overstrand promotes, as they experienced a drought in the past 5 years, which led to shortages of water in the dam that had been the main source of municipal water. 

The water shortage led to drilling of "bore holes" (wells), which is slated to become the main source of municipal water.  Unlike Tucson, this area's aquifer has an abundant supply of water, so drilling wells was a practical solution.  However, the municipality is still trying to promote water conservation and is even looking to hire a PIO for this function (BTW, I asked about the pay for a job like this and Steve told me it would pay 250,000 Rand per year, which is equivalent to $25-30K per year in the U.S.)

We also had the opportunity to take in a City Council meeting, which had a few differences from the city council meetings I have seen in the U.S., but nothing too radically different.  However, the meeting was conducted in Afrikaans, so I didn't take in everything that was being said!

A couple of interesting departures from city/town council meetings in the U.S. was the delegation of authority to the Executive Mayor, who has the power to approve certain items without a vote of the Council.  Similar to Capetown, the Council is half directly elected and half proportionally selected based on the percentage of the vote received by political parties.  The City Council here has 20 members.

B.J. and I had lunch with his host, Jaco, at the usual South African lunch time of 1:30 (side note: I am STARVING by this time - my American stomach is trained for lunch at noon!!). 

In the afternoon, we had a quick visit to a recycling center, which B.J. was super interested in.  I wasn't as crazy about it, considering that it had started raining and the place didn't smell so hot.

The highlight of the day was stopping by Jaco's office, who is veterinarian and also works with the equivalent of the Humane Society here.  We visited the Cattery (I've never heard this word before, but I like it) -  a 2-room building with about 20 kitties and cats.  Too cute!  It was so relaxing to be able to spend some time with sweet little kitties.

At 5 p.m., Jenny and I were collected by our new "host dad," Metcalf, who took us back to his and his wife, Carina's, house.  They have a wonderful house about a block away from the ocean and are amazing hosts!  We are totally spoiled, as we have the entire first floor suite to ourselves with separate rooms and bathrooms.

Jenny and I had a relaxing evening at home with Metcalf and Carina, who treated us to a home-cooked meal, and of course, some great red wine.  After this blog is all posted, I am going to retire to my suite and head off to bed.  Tomorrow we are visiting Rotary projects, touring an abalone farm and then doing a presentation at the Hermanus Rotary Club tomorrow evening.