This story will be very long if told in detail as it has been going on for more than a year. We have tried to summarize it as best we can.
Our first official complaint was sent to the board on the 8th of December 2008. We were not happy with goings on with the stand in front of us because of the amount of imported soil Mr Marques was dumping on his stand. We tried from March 2009 onwards to get an urgent, physically meeting at stand 324 with the Architectural committee. We had one phone call from Mr Malcolm Storey, chairman of the Architectural committee, promising that he will look into the matter. Despite several e-mails and calls we were ignored until the 6th May 2009 when we received a letter from the "board" stating they had employed a surveyor to check if the building is according to plan, and that they were satisfied that the building is complying with the guidelines. They also said that they have contacted the neighbours on both sides of stand 324 and that no one had any complaints. This letter indicated that it was the full "boards" decision - when in fact it was not.
At that time they had never contacted any neighbours, because we contacted these neighbours immediately after receiving this letter and both denied being contacted by any board member. This letter was not drafted with the knowledge of the "full board".
After e-mailing them that we knew, about the lie, about contacting the neighbours plus a lot more pressure from our side, we were granted a site meeting on the 8th June 2009. Some of the persons that were present were - Trevor Coleman (chairman), Deon Oosthuizen, Malcolm Storey, Rynette Farrar, Will Oosthuizen and Mrs Marques with her contractor. Adrian Farrar was not there as he was out the country at that time. I, Rynette recorded the whole conversation on tape. You can clearly hear on this recording that Mr Coleman hardly gave me any time to speak and try and steamroller over me all the time. Also on this recording you can hear the board members present beginning to argue about where the bench mark for height purposes is after I popped this question to them. The board/management were arguing about this and were made quiet by Trevor Coleman with the words "we better canvas". We found out later from Will Oosthuizen that they tried to move this bench mark, after discovering that we were indeed correct. At this meeting it was agreed however that we can employ our own surveyor and that they will re-think their actions if our surveyor find anything.
Mr Visser was then employed by us as our surveyor and wanted the details of the original surveyor who took the contour details at the beginning before any landfill was done. Mr Marques told the committee that it was a Mr Richardson but he is no longer in the country. Mr Visser however knew Mr Richardson and contacted him (Mr Richardson knew nothing about leaving the country) and Mr Visser's report was based on these original contours. Mr Visser also contacted Mr Margot (the surveyor that the estate engaged) only to learn that the committee never told him to check and see if when this house is in fact completed if it will fall within the maximum 10m height. He was never even given a building plan. He was just told to give the contour heights of the first and second tree, as well as the foundation slab and the bench mark. This house was also built higher than the original approved plans.
Mr Visser found that this house was moved substantially away from the road and was lifted more by 1,63m. The zero line was approve at 6.0m but was now at 7.63m. Mr Visser also discovered that the entrance between the two garages are made bigger and the building line exceeded. Mr Visser's report stated that the top of the wall (with no roof) on southern side was at 12.0m This report was given to the committee, but still they refuse to do anything. They came out with silly remarks like, that if Mr Marques put a flat roof on this section that he will be in the 10m height limit, totally ignoring the fact the report said the wall is already at 12m (wall two meters to high - never mind any sort of roof). The other silly remark was that Mr Marques, and his contractor Victor, said that they will drop the slabs to be within the 10m height limit. As far as we know the slabs are not moveable! The fact that they come out with such absurd suggestions and that the committee actually believes him, gave us the idea that from the start this committee was not intresting in solving this problem at all and they are still not until up to this very day.
We finally went to the council to get a stop order issued as they were building off plan. "Somebody" must have told them to built as quick as possible and then we cannot stop them. Mr Marques and Victor went on building illegally for two or three days. They had told Deon Oosthuizen that the council has given them permission to carry on and that he has a letter stating so. I phoned the council and found out that this was untrue. After putting pressure on Deon Oosthuizen he then finally stop them from carrying on.
Mr Marques tried to hand in his new as build plan on the 27th October 2009 but Deon Oosthuizen gave it back to him as the contour lines were not correct. Now "somebody", (other than Deon), decided that this incorrect /inaccurate plan will be approved and they will also relax the building line without our permission (they got the other two neighbours to sign). This "somebody" also gave the council a letter stating that none of the neigbours had any complaints knowing fully well that we are complaining. The definition in the council documents state that a neighbours is any adjacent stand even if a road seperates them. Now if this action does not show any wrong doing, then we don't know what does.
We have subsequently reported this Architect to the SA council board of Architects and they are currently busy with their investigations
Out of frustration, we decided to distribute petition letters to home owners telling them about this case and this is where we discovered that most of the board members were not aware of this problem at all. We were contacted by some of them asking for more details.
We promply then requested a meeting with the "whole board" and this took place on the 3rd of December 2009. The board told us that they cannot ask anybody to pull their house down, but they can pull back their permission to build, in which case the owner will have no choice other than to rectify the problem even if it means pulling down some parts of his house. They said that they would have a meeting first with this owner in the new year. We requested at this meeting that if they want another surveyor report then Mr Richardson should be allowed to do this. We also requested that the Architectural committee members that were involved in this problem from the beginning, not be allowed to conduct any meetings and make any decisions without the full board - this was agreed to.
From four different sources we knew that some of the board members at this meeting said that we had actually given them enough proof that Mr Marques was grossly in the wrong here, and that they don't need another surveyor report.
Then certain board members decided that it were not in their interest to have other board members attending these meetings and they hastilly arrange a meeting with Mr Marques on the 21th January 2010 and then another one on the 26th January 2010, where they then promply made a decision regarding this case. They gave extremely short notice to all board members and thus most could not attend due to other commitments.
All our arguements were quashed with a statement that no further contact would be entertained and that we should not get any lawyers involved as this would create animosity. They forget that with doing this they now created animosity thoughout the estate.
This whole mess and susequent capitulation of these few board members could have been prevented had they any principles about the fact that estate guidelines are compulsary for all.
This also makes us wonder, why does the rest of the board allow these individuals to make and run the board on scorned eggo's instead of facts put on the table.
Everybody must also remember that Mr Marques had serveral lawyers letters warning him that he is going forward totally at his own risk. So no one should feel sorry for him.
Adrian and Rynette
