March 2022
Dear Residents
We trust you are safe and well and wish you all the best for 2022.
Birdhaven remains an amazing suburb loved by its residents as well as its many regular visitors. Since the upgrades and improvements to the James and Ethel Gray Park, particularly the completion of the Clear Vu fencing, as well as other new exciting offerings in the shopping precinct, Birdhaven is enjoyed by a myriad of people who visit either to enjoy the outdoors or to meet friends at the shops.
Last year, with the support of residents we managed to do additional maintenance, including the repair of a number of pavements on St Andrews Street and North Street, the repair and replacement of gum poles, and repair of street names. This was done together with the regular cleaning of areas of the suburb.
2022 SUBSCRIPTIONS
The annual subscription for houses or clusters for 2022 is R730 per house. The annual subscription for flats and apartments for 2022 is R73 per flat or apartment.
If you are willing to donate a higher amount, this will be greatly appreciated, and we are most grateful to those residents who are able to support us with additional funding over the course of the year. We note that our service providers face cost increases due to, inter alia, uncertain petrol prices and material costs.
Our bank details are as follows:
Bank:
Branch Code: Account Number: Branch Name:
Standard Bank of South Africa Limited 00-42-05
0001948245
Jan Smuts Avenue Branch
Please insert your name & street address as reference & email the payment confirmation tobirdhavenrpa@gmail.com.
Please support us so that we can deploy the funds into our maintenance and cleaning endeavours. These funds are used for maintaining the suburb, and includes repair of pavements, cleaning, repair of gum poles, general maintenance and clearing of illegally dumped waste and material. This year we intend to use funds to continue maintenance, as upgrade equipment such as petrol grass cutters and other implements, and hopefully add some facilities referred to below.
UPDATES
We have the following important updates for you-
- This year we hope to use some funding to upgrade facilities around the suburb, such as additional park benches, playground areas, bins and picnic benches. If you would like to donate any of these, please let us know and we can manage the process for you. If you would like to dedicate the donation or have a business recognised, we will do this for you on the relevant item.
- We have worked again recently with City Power to repair various street lights in the suburb. At present in Birdhaven, we only have a handful of streetlights not working.
- Please report any street lights that are not working on the City Power website www.citypower.co.za . Then select Fault Logging. If you have not registered on the website, please do so as it is a useful and important resource. When reporting street lights that are not working, please endeavour to indicate the number on the pole itself (some numbers are not visible) or the nearest corner or house number; if there is an area out, reference can be made to the street pole numbers themselves or the entire street. There are comments sections on the reporting page for additional information.
- We are aware of the delays of grass cutting in areas of the suburb, particularly the parks and are working with City Parks, our councillor and the James and Ethel Gray Foundation to endeavour to accelerate this process.
- We have recently cleaned up the pavements along North Street which had significant weeds and also repaired some holes in the pavements on North Street.
- Please report the potholes to hotline@jra.org.za and if possible, please take a picture of the pothole and indicate the road, nearest corner and nearest house. In this regard, we are aware of pot holes on Edgewood Avenue / Cnr Melrose Street.
- The Discovery Pot Hole Patrol APP is also recommended to report potholes.
- We continue to work with the James and Ethel Gray Park Foundation in a number of new initiatives now that the Clear Vu fencing is complete around the James and Ethel Gray Park. The completion of the fencing is a major milestone for the suburb and we are very grateful to the Foundation for the amazing work in this regard. The parking area at the top of the JEG has also been re-designed to facilitate additional vehicles and the 3 new gates, two at the parking area and one on Edgewood Avenue have added much needed enhancements to the parking area and general access.
- We continue to work with the owners of the Birdhaven shopping centre and we thank Ralph Chin for his ongoing support as well as recent upgrades such as lighting in the parking areas. We are hopeful that additional traffic calming measures will be implemented in the shopping precinct in the coming months. The shopping centre offering has expanded and is an important part of the suburb.
- Johannesburg Roads Agency has also done much needed road markings in the area.
- Please endeavour to keep your curbs and pavements outside your homes clean and well cut as this adds to the overall beauty of the suburb.
Please note the recent updates from MB CAP relating to various criminal activities in the suburb and we encourage you to join CAP and get the regular email updates. We are concerned about increased levels of opportunistic crimes (particularly in the shopping precinct) and urge you to exercise vigilance. MB CAP offers regular helpful suggestions in this regard. We are very grateful to MB CAP for all its efforts in the suburb and we hope you will support CAP. We also had the assistance of the CAP Green Team in cleaning certain areas during 2021- we are very grateful for that additional support and hope to continue working with the team.
As you may be aware, joining the website of the Birdhaven Rate Payers is free and you can do this by logging on to www.birdhavenrpa.co.za and you will receive updates.
If you have moved into the suburb in the last 12 months, please send us your contact information so that we can update our database. The subscription period for the 2022 year runs from January 2022 to December 2022.
We will continue to work with the relevant authorities to maintain our suburb as well as the new councillor Belinda Echeozonjoku and we wish her all the very best in her new role.
Remember- if you see something, say something!
Kind regards
Birdhaven Ratepayers Association