Hennops Blue attended a very informative meeting yesterday with Catherine Keyworth, the manager of Arcadia City Improvement District (Arc CID) In Partnership with the City of Tshwane. http://arccid.co.za/ Thank you Ric and Joshua Andrews for setting up the meeting. Catherine runs a very successful organization in the Arcadia precinct. Her mother started it in 2002 to heal the inner city of degradation. They are doing a phenomenal job. They have their own cleaning team and security team and have completely uplifted the 9 city blocks that they are responsible for. Stakeholders invest 8% of what they pay municipal rates and taxes to Arc CID and they ensure that the area remains clean of ‘crime and grime’. Property rates have improved by 23% of the last 16 years due to this investment. She manages 15 security guards and 7 cleaners and they do an incredible job of keeping the area clean.
We walked the area and there is no litter, the pavements are clean, dustbins empty and there is an strong energy of upliftment and success. She has a close working relationship with City of Tshwane and as soon as her or her staff see illegal activities or sewage and water leaks they are immediately reported and dealt with. She even adds the extra touch of paint to old derelict post boxes and fixing street signs making the area look smart. It is quite incredible what a small amount of staff in such a large are can do efficiently and effectively. Staff members are given a phone that can take photos with GPS coordinates so problems can be immediately reported and attended to. People in the area respect her and work with her. A fish and chips shop was dumping potato peels into the Apies River and she got them to stop, is one example of many things the organization is achieving. The organization is tightly run with an impressive board of directors including Peter Buchel and Allen Joss, well-known Pretoria businessmen.
This concept cleaned up New York City. When Giuliani took office as Mayor of New York City, he hired a new police commissioner, William Bratton, who applied the broken windows theory of urban decay, which holds that minor disorders and violations create a permissive atmosphere that leads to further and more serious crimes that can threaten the safety of a city. Within several years, Giuliani was widely credited for making major improvements in the city's quality of life and lowering the rate of violent crimes. Giuliani is now attorney for Donald Trump. The same is happening in Arcadia. Catherine implements the law and with good working relationship with City of Tshwane she is getting the job done. She says it requires synergy with state departments, stakeholder buy in, good relationships, pro-activity and consistency. The work Willem Snyman fresh.ngo has done over the past few days is a prime example of how this can happen. However, in order to achieve success it needs to be ongoing and consistent. And organization like Arc CID needs to be established along the Hennops River with stakeholder buy in with a number of divisions operating along the way. For example, the Kaalspruit division would actively work in monitoring the wetland dumping and bringing about change. Each division would be responsible for waste management, monitoring and reporting crime to the officials, illegal activities ‘, sewage and water leaks and protecting the water sources. NGO’s working hand in hand with government departments on a daily basis to bring in change. This is something that needs to be developed and implemented to heal the Hennops.
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