Kingswood BUZZard
The official Newsletter of the Kingswood Golf Estate HOA
December 2021 Edition #6
From the CEO
Welcome to our final edition of the Kingswood BUZZard for 2021.
Christmas is in the air and everybody is rushing to finish the year before taking a well-deserved break with friends and family. Our beautiful estate will be ready, mostly, to welcome your guests and family when they visit.
The reason I say ‘mostly’ is because we are still doing our level best to repair all the damage caused by the flooding of 22 November and 6 December. More detail will be shared regarding the damage and repairs later in this issue.
As this year draws to a close and the New Year is looming, what can we say about 2021 that has not already been said on the news and social media? This year had, especially for the estate, some wonderful successes (more about these later in this newsletter), but it also had its challenges. By now we are all sick and tired of Covid and the devastating effect it’s had on our economy, so no more about that.
This year has seen riots in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, which, as a consequence, caused the SASRIA insurance to skyrocket. We’ve seen a mixed bag of sporting successes and disappointments, all while the world was anticipating ‘the next wave’ to put a stop to the festivities. We saw the municipal elections taking place on 1 November, with the customary coalition talks afterwards, and to top it all we were faced with a massive fuel price increase shortly before December.
Enough of the depressing stuff!
The teams appointed to repair the most critical infrastructure damage caused by the floods on the estate did an admirable job, considering the fact that this was all unscheduled work to be added to an already full schedule, mere days before the builders’ holidays.
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We are adequately insured and our respective insurers will cover the cost of repairs. The vehicle subway underneath Plattner Boulevard cannot be repaired this year due to the magnitude of the work involved.
The subway will thus be closed to traffic until repairs are done early in the new year. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank all our homeowners for their patience and understanding while we repair all of the damaged infrastructure. We would like to encourage all our homeowners to inform their visitors and tenants of the house rules of the estate to ensure their and others’ enjoyment of our beautiful estate during December.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the loyal and dedicated staff of the HOA and Kingswood HOA Properties for their hard work this year, sometimes under extremely difficult circumstances – I look forward to working shoulder to shoulder with you in 2022.
The HOA wishes you and all your loved ones a merry and relaxing Christmas and a happy New Year. We look forward to working hard in 2022 to make Kingswood Golf Estate an even better place to live and play.
Kingswood greetings,
Willem Jacobs
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Kingswood BUZZard News
Flood Damage
5 min readGeorge measured 105mm of rainfall in a two-hour period on Monday 22 November, which led to extensive flash flood damage to private as well as municipal infrastructure. In total, George measured 148.5mm of rain from 22–24 November – a record in anyone’s books, but miraculously without severe injuries or fatalities being reported in the days following the storm.
What’s On At Kingswood This Season … And How Cool Are These New Carts?!
4 min readThe investment of Kingswood Golf Operations (KGO) in the acquisition of 30 brand-new golf carts did much to lighten the mood of those estate management members grappling with the aftermath of the 22 November flood.
Best Practice – Short-Term Rental
3 min readBest practice when it comes to responsible short-term letting at Kingswood Golf Estate (KGE) is always worth a relook, with the summer season now here and the issue invariably resurfacing in what may be billed the making-a-festive-buck context.
Green building
2 min readWhen it was announced in November that South Africa had concluded a historic agreement to secure R131 billion for the country’s transition to a low carbon economy, the news was celebrated in international environmental circles. On a national level, estate managers and developers can contribute by building green and maintaining planet-friendly standards.
Kingswood’s – Road To Compliance
4 min readThe Kingswood Golf Estate (KGE) management team embarked on a POPIA and PAIA Compliance Preparation Project in May 2021 in order to establish appropriate measures for protecting the personal information of homeowners, residents, visitors and other stakeholders in a lawful and secure manner.
Rebuilding Tourism
4 min readThe tourism industry in George, as in many holiday destinations across South Africa and the world, has suffered greatly since the first COVID-19 lockdowns came into effect at the end of March 2020. The local tourism office falls under George Municipality and we tracked down the town’s tourism manager, Joan Shaw, who shared data collated over the past year, as well as a cautiously optimistic outlook for 2022.
Kingswood Achievements And Investments
4 min readMarilyn Kamp, one of four Homeowners Association (HOA) trustees – along with fellow newbies Chris Horsley and Fielies Nieuwoudt, and old hand Gerrit Botha – provided the meat for this summary of the year that was at Kingswood Golf Estate, and some exciting future bytes. We also thank former trustee and numbers man par excellence, Roy Edge, for contributing to the facts and figures below.
