Too big, too small or just right?

The results of a committee set up to rezonee property tax districts to better reflect the neighborhoods’ value have been disregarded.

By PEGGY CIDOR
We have all paid it, and more than once: property tax, better known as arnona. Colorful and glossy, the much-feared but unavoidable brochure arrives in our mailboxes every year inviting us to pay our annual contribution to the maintenance of our city through our taxes.
For those who are not aware, the amount requested is, in principle, based on two parameters: the size of the property and its location. The first issue is not too difficult to ascertain – basically, a meter is a meter, even in such a holy city.
The second component – the location of the property, and as a result, its real value – is another issue altogether.
In fact, it has become over the years a matter of anger and frustration for many residents, who are required to pay a property tax rate they believe does not reflect the quality of their environment.
“Jerusalem has grown over the years,” city council member Pepe Alalu (Meretz) explained years ago. “No one has ever bothered to look at the city’s current map and rethink the allocation of arnona rates. I believe this has caused real harm to the residents.”
Alalu was not alone in his struggle; so thought Shmuel Yitzhaki (Shas) and a few other city council members at the time. Five years ago, Alalu and Yitzhaki’s wish was finally granted, and a special committee was set up to check and rethink the division of the neighborhoods for calculating arnona. The results of the committee’s work – which cost the taxpayers (the same ones who are not satisfied with their arnona rate) NIS 400,000 – were submitted to the city council and the mayor recently, and… ended up in the bin of rejected proposals.
Take, for example, the Musrara (officially Morasha) neighborhood. In the early Fifties and until the late Eighties, it was one of the poorest and most neglected areas in the city. But in the mid-Eighties, something happened to the neighborhood. Besides the huge (and ugly) shikunim, the beautiful old Arab houses were bought by well-to-do newcomers from Europe and America, who refurbished and transformed the once seam-line neighborhood into one of the city’s wealthiest.
According to Alalu, the arnona rates in Musrara are still calculated as if the neighborhood is one of the poorest in the city.
“And this is not the only anomaly in the arnona issue,” he said. Here is another example: Nofei Zion, the luxurious new Jewish neighborhood near Jebl Mukaber is taxed like its poorer Arab neighbors, because for the property tax department at Kikar Safra, this is the same neighborhood.
So what happened to the results of the special committee? Well, among the various findings and recommendations of the professional team that worked on it for about seven years was an increase in the taxes for residents of some of the new, rather well-to-do haredi neighborhoods near the old and rather poor locations such as Mea She’arim.
Haredi residents are sometimes really lucky; they have true and devoted representatives (or perhaps could it be that they just understand better the rules of democracy – you know, such as that a representative’s responsibility is to see that the interests of those who sent him are protected).
In any case, Yitzhak Pindrus and Yossi Deitsch, both deputy mayors and members of the United Torah Judaism party, explained nicely to Mayor Nir Barkat that it was not going to work.
“They didn’t even have to really threaten anyone,” says Alalu with a sigh. “Barkat agreed to disregard the report and that was it. Residents will keep on paying too much – or too little – tax on their properties, and seven years of work, together with thousands of shekels are just thrown into the garbage.”