CBPS and CBRRA holds successful meeting to re-negotiate partitioned option

TO: CBRRA Manco

The meeting last evening attended by Sandy, Michele and Fiona from the school and John, Brent and myself was positive to the point that they agreed to reconsider the shared option but with the emphasis more on a partition option, in which both the school and club have separate but adjoining facilities. This will (hopefully) remove the liquor licence obstacle.

I will organise a meeting with the club to pursue this matter.

Cheers

Chris 

From: "Fiona Hart" <fionamcintosh@telkomsa.net>

Subject: CPG reply to Chris Willemse's letter

Date: 10 September 2013 11:04:47 AM SAST

To: "'Chris Willemse'" <cnwillemse@gmail.com>

Cc: "'Sandy Van Hoogstraten'" <sandy@palmtreehouse.co.za>, "'Michele Harvey'" <michele@tictac.co.za>

Hi Chris,

Thank you very much for taking the time to meet yesterday.

I do feel that it was constructive and hope that there might be a way that
we could find a suitable solution in the quickest possible time and with the
lease amount of resistance from the community.

We will wait to hear from you regarding a possible proposal from the bowling
club.

As a courtesy I felt I should send you the letter that I send to Atlantic
Sun in response to your letter.  I sent it in last week but missed the
deadline so there is a good chance it will be in this week's edition.

Please feel free to contact Sandy or myself if you have any further
questions.

Kind regards,
Fiona Hart

Re: Letter by Chris Willemse (Chairman of Camps Bay Residents and Ratepayers Assoc) Atlantic Sun 29 August refers.

We, the Concerned Parents Group, are encouraged by the continued commitment expressed by CBRRA to promote the best interest of the community. We all agree that the land currently occupied by the Camps Bay Bowling Club should be used in such a way as to derive maximum benefit for the maximum number of community members.

We are therefore perplexed by Mr Willemse’s assertion that maximum benefit will be derived from a shared arrangement in which the school is allocated “an area” of “the current large parking lot”, while the Bowling Club retains the rest of the facility. While we are definitely in favour of some form of shared facility use with other interest groups, we believe that primary schooling should constitute the main activity on the site. Our reasons are:

1.     According to spatial allocations published by the City and the Western Cape Education Department, Camps Bay is currently over-provided for in terms of active recreation facilities (121% and this does not take into account access to beaches and mountains) and severely under-provided for in terms of primary schooling facilities (31%). Even if the entire piece of land were given over to primary schooling, there would still be a significant imbalance, with active recreation reduced to 112% of the optimal, and primary schooling increased to 40% . (These calculations can be viewed on the CPG’s Facebook page.)

2.     The Prep and Primary Schools in Camps Bay which, though split across two campuses for historical reasons, together constitute the community’s primary schooling facility, run a two-stream system, with two classes per grade for grades R to 7. As evidenced by a significant number of our community’s children being turned away in the past five years, a shift to a three-stream system is well overdue. This implies a 50% growth in pupil numbers and “an area” of the parking lot will be hopelessly inadequate to accommodate this growth. The current Prep School campus does not have any sporting facilities at all; it has minimal play facilities (not a blade of grass); and it has a tiny hall, which can barely accommodate the current numbers.

3.     The Bowling Club, by contrast, is hopelessly underutilizing the land. According to their AGM report for 2012, they were not able to fill two teams (four players per team) to compete in the league, and had to borrow members from the Gardens Club. Meanwhile, the Glen Country Club one kilometer away is concerned about the future of its Bowls section, according to a letter from its president. (See CPG’s Facebook page for both documents.) Clearly, the community’s need for education facilities far outstrips its need for bowling facilities.

4.     The Prep and Primary Schools have a strong community spirit. They already share their facilities with a large number of other interest groups in the community, for judo, spanish dancing, prayer groups and youth groups, to name a few. So the host of community-oriented activities which currently use the bowling club’s hall would probably continue to do so - with the exception of any requiring a liquor license. The rest of the clubhouse would be renovated to suit the school’s needs, and the two bowling greens, currently restricted to single-use due to their fragile nature, would become mixed-use sporting facilities which the school would share with the community. A model for this is the Symmonds Field, which is leased and tended by the Primary School, but used at least as much by the rest of the community.

The fact is that, while the land can be used to great benefit by a number of interest groups alongside the school, co-habitation with the CBBC is both unnecessary and impossible. It is unnecessary because no one is being denied access to bowling facilities. It is impossible because the premises cannot accommodate the needs of both school and club simultaneously.

Mr Willemse also made reference to 2014 as a date for the expansion of the Prep School. It is important that the community is aware that 2014 is no longer a possibility. The parents in the community, especially those who have not yet secured a place for their children, hope fervently that the rest of the community will support us in making expansion a reality for 2015. Until then, our children will continue to suffer the consequences of spatial allocations that currently do not derive maximum benefit for the community.

Fiona Hart

Deputy chairperson, Concerned Parents Group