With a NIS 770 million increase from last year, Mayor Nir Barkat has great plans for the city; The good news is that he says he will clean it up.
By PEGGY CIDORGarbage truck(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
The stage and the setting of the city budget are more or less replayed every year, with the novelty essentially only in the sums of money. Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat and his high-ranking staff presented the municipality’s budget for 2015 to the public-at-large via the press on Sunday.The city’s 2015 budget of NIS 4.92 billion is NIS 270 million higher than 2014’s.The special development budget, which comes directly from government offices for development in their respective fields – like transportation and road construction – is an additional NIS 1.8b. It grew by NIS 500m.in comparison to last year.Altogether, the growth in the city’s budget (both regular and developmental) stands at 13 percent more than last year. Behind these remarkable sums stand a lot of projects, developments and programs compiled by the departments and administrations at Safra Square, reflecting what Barkat has in mind for the city.Faithful to his pledge that his second tenure as mayor would be more focused on neighborhoods’ needs – and a little less on ostentatious projects – this new budget holds a promising message of NIS 404m. in terms of public buildings including community centers, schools and kindergartens, swimming pools, youth centers and playgrounds.The money will enable the construction of five swimming pools – in Beit Hanina, Har Nof, East Talpiot, Ramot and Pisgat Ze’ev. Youth centers will be available for various activities – including youth movements – in Givat Masua, Kiryat Hayovel and Beit Hakerem. Also planned is a young adult center in Pisgat Ze’ev and new branches of community centers in Ramat Sharett, Givat Mordechai, Bayit Vegan and Wadi Joz.Sports centers will be built in Katamonim, Homat Shmuel and Beit Hanina.One of the major issues Barkat plans to address is the city’s poverty rates. Generally speaking, Barkat doesn’t like – to put it mildly – to see “his” city starring annually at the top of the Central Bureau of Statistics lists of cities under the poverty line. While initially in his previous tenure he tried to divert attention from this embarrassing problem by hosting lots of outdoor and showy events, by now it has become clear to him and his staff that hiding the underprivileged won’t make them disappear.Since last year, but much more, ostensibly, in 2015, the programs tackling poverty and providing solutions to improve the situation are growing.Under Barkat’s guidelines a special plan to fight poverty has been planned and prepared by his staff, reflecting his credo: investing in education, developing hi-tech initiatives, reducing gaps between residents and increasing the number of jobs available. Some NIS 60m. has been assigned to this plan for 2015, which includes encouraging well todo French-Jewish immigrants to choose Jerusalem (many have liberal professions and can settle here relatively easily). Also planned are centers for senior citizens in various neighborhoods, renovation of public-housing units for homeless people, a community and cultural center for Ethiopian Jews in Katamonim and a new wellbaby clinic in Sur Bahir.At the meeting with the press on the budget, Barkat emphasized that “there won’t be a single resident of Jerusalem who will not feel the impact of the 2015 budget on the city’s life.”THE 2015 budget bears some good news regarding the capital’s cleanliness. With a supplement of NIS 182m.(NIS 39m. from the city’s budget and NIS 143m. from the development budget) Barkat hopes to clean and to embellish the city – a pledge he made upon becoming mayor more than six years ago. He hasn’t totally achieved this so far, despite some improvement compared to the period before his first tenure.What will be done with that money? More teams for sweeping the streets (both mechanically and manually), special teams to clean the graffiti across the city, expanding the project that began last year to replace the refuse containers with more concealed models, and adding special cleaning shifts in the city center and the tourist areas.Some 600 playground and public parks will cleaned up, renovated and shaded (shading playgrounds is one of the first achievements of Deputy Mayor Rachel Azaria, who, as a young mother, requested that enhancement).Last but not least, a center for garbage sorting and recycling will open and the project to distribute compost bins to the residents will be expanded.As for education, NIS 90m. from the city’s regular budget and NIS 88m. from the development budget will be used to extend the computerized networks in schools (including the Arab sector), to install air conditioning in all public schools and to extend a series of already-functioning special projects to other schools. This budget will serve to renovate and consolidate school buildings, with an emphasis on the Arab sector, and launch a program to prevent teenagers from dropping out schools.The budget for culture, leisure and sports will grow by NIS 78m. (NIS 12m. from the city’s budget and NIS 66m. from the development budget). It will ensure a large series of cultural and sports projects in all neighborhoods, enabling the community centers to hire culture and leisure coordinators. In addition, there will be a project to encourage and give first-stage support to young local artists, as well as building more bicycle paths, sports grounds and athletic fields for youth in the Arab sector, among others.The budget for infrastructure stands at NIS 886m. It includes renovating and constructing roads, streets and sidewalks on both sides of the city and developing the public transportation system – including 200 electronic signs at bus stops.Altogether, NIS 770m. has been added to the city’s budget, most of which comes from the government, and, according to Barkat, a significant improvement in municipal tax collections. In that regard, he emphasized that Jerusalem, which has one of the highest levels of municipal taxes among the large cities, has not requested government authorization to increase the tax beyond the rise voted on in the Knesset.Barkat stressed that this year’s budget represents what he sees as a positive change in the government’s attitude to the special needs of the city, as it came out in the generous budgets allocated to the city (the special development budget).To answer the question whether there is some truth in the recent rumor that the extra budget was in exchange for him agreeing to join the Likud and be appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as Jerusalem affairs minister if Netanyahu is elected prime minister in the Knesset elections (in addition to his role as mayor), Barkat answered that a mayor who is totally devoted to his city’s interests can serve the city no less well and probably better than any minister. As for his future plans, Barkat said that for the moment he has no other plans than continuing to be the mayor of Jerusalem, a role in which he is “very happy and satisfied.”
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