The 2010 municipal budget - good for the wealthy and who cares about the rest?

Yesterday evening the Tel Aviv - Yafo municipal council voted for the budget proposal for the year 2010: 

The coalition praised themselves for their great sensitivity and the wonderful budget proposal. That included Jaffa council member Ahmad Mashrawi (Meretz) who, like the total bunny he is,   voted in favour of a budget in which the south of the city, Jaffa included, continues to be discriminated against.

Mashrawi, who just loves publicity,  claims to vote in favour of  Jaffa but the facts show the opposite. Meretz are part of the coalition and their current track record is highly embarrassing.  

The outnumbered opposition (to Ron Hulday's wide coalition) asked to vote separately on a number of clauses, in order to try and make at least a few improvements and do some social justice:

Omar Siksik of the Jaffa list asked to vote separately for an added 200.000 NIS for the Jaffa based "Hirsh" early childhood development center. 

The Hirsch centre provides testing and treatment for development problems for children at a young age.   The centre is highly professional and the only service of its kind in the whole city able to provide these services in Arabic. The centre's very existence is threatened due to the continued budget cuts.  The implication of the centre's closure or limited ability to provide services is obvious: Parents will not be able to provide their young children with the most basic services. Not even privately (the majority would not have the money for that in any case) as their is no alternative in all of the city for Arabic speaking young children. 

Mashrawi (Meretz, that supposedly socially conscious party, now part of the coalition, what will people do for a little money) has been posing as the big fighter for the Hirsch centre, but reality is rather different as he did NOT vote in favour. He abstained, what a hero!

A city that spends 70 million NIS on a bicycle rental project does not have 1.100.000 for the Hirsch center, or 55.000 for the teenage health clinic, which will receive 0 money in 2010.

Or, another example: the Toulouse Club for the elderly, the only one serving Jaffa's elderly Palestinian population in Ajami, has an annual budget of 70.000 NIS. Its sister club in Neve Golan (Yafo Gimmel) which serves that area's Jewish population receives 220.000 NIS in the budget.  I am in favour of Neve Golan's budget. But Why does the Ajami Club for elderly Arabic speakers receive so little? 

And these are only a few examples. I could go on and on and on. The budget is highly biased.

Tel Aviv is positioning itself as a city for the wealthy only, disregarding its poorer inhabitants. In addition the 2010 budget is totally greenwashed. More and more car parks and highways. 

It was embarrassing to see Peer Wisner (the Green Party also in the coalition) vote in favour of the budget. What a little money does to these "freedom fighters".

Asbestos is good for children's health

My friend E. lives in a small shack located next to several large houses and newly constructed villas in Ajami.

She has three young children.

Her much richer neighbors decided to do some home improvement and replace the asbestos roof of their home with a pretty tiled one.

Usually you rent a container and the demolition crew immediately remove the rubble. Especially when there is asbestos involved, the work is carried out by a specialist company and under stringent conditions.

E.'s neighbors are too stingy to do so and they simply dump their filth next to E's home, including a large amount of broken asbestos roof elements.

Whenever there is a southern wind, the asbestos dust is blown straight into the window of the children's' bedroom. The municipality refuses to act and the neighbors don't care, although they themselves have young children as well.

E. herself doesn't have the money to employ a company to remove the ever growing mountain next to her home. Her children love to play outside in the yard, but that has become dangerous. But then,. inside the house it is dangerous as well.

It appears no one really wants to take responsibility. If it was their kids living next door, would they be as careless?

Update: After an article in Yediot Tel Aviv the municipality arrived and took away the asbestos and other garbage. The municipal spokesman claimed E. had never informed the municipality it was asbestos, otherwise they would have come immediately, or so they claimed. Right. Daily phones and faxes by E. representative in the municipal council, Omar Siksik, were apparently not heard. In any case, the main thing, the asbestos was removed.

Jaffa mud takes hostages

Different streets in Jaffa were opened up in order to carry out major maintenance work. As usual, the archeologists go in first, then all the other relevant companies; electricity, sewage, water etc.

One huge construction and infrastructure company was working on 4 big projects in Jaffa, in four different locations, Stang.

Traffic jams, mud, we all got used to it.

About 5 weeks ago Stang went belly up and a court decree forbids the municipality to employ any other company in order to complete the works.

And Jaffans pay the price.

People with walking difficulties, young children and the elderly have trouble leaving their homes. At different locations the sewage is open and it is just a matter of time until some small child falls in. One of the open sewers is close to the Weitzman - AlZahara primary school complex. And yes, we informed the municipality, several times, by phone and in writing.

After the rainfalls of last week, the open sewage was flooded and could not easily be seen from the muddy streets.

In addition to the great inconvenience and health hazard, this is an accident waiting to happen. Court order or not, the municipality should take more responsibility. Jaffa residents are not hostages

On Constructing 5-Legged Camels

"A camel is a horse designed by a planning committee"

Eco-friendly transportation is important. Period.
Tel Aviv is crowded, traffic jams are hell and the lack of parking space is somewhere way beyond hell. So travelling by bicycle or by public transport makes a lot of sense.

Sort of.
Sometimes.
In some areas.

I use my bike to go from A to B. It's easy, cheap and quick. No parking problems. I'm not so sure it is healthy, due to the awful air quality i breathe while pedalling my way between buses, vespa motor bikes (i read somewhere their exhaust fumes are about as bad as those of a truck, doe to the amount of small particles they emit) and the endless lines of cars standing idle in yet another traffic jam.

However, in some areas it is also dead scary. Dan bus drivers are my worst enemy. Egged drivers come a close second only because there are less of them in the areas where i tend to travel most, not that they are more bike friendly). Jaffa's Jerusalem Boulevard (Nouzha or Pasha in the past) is noteworthy as a very scare road for the audacious cyclist.

The municipality is known for its greenwash policy making: More parking lots , more highways, more huge road crossings of multi-lane free-ways, more cars in short. But they talk green. So they plan bike paths. Which is nice. Or rather, which could be nice.
The only problem being that those who plan them, have not seen a bike close by for years. Nor have they used public transport.
Otherwise, how can one explain the silly bike paths along Ibn Gvirol street? The clash between people waiting at the bus stops or going to and from the bus-stops which are located right on the bike paths is unavoidable. Not even a camel, but a five-legged, blind and deaf camelchik, that's what it is, the Ibn Gvirol bike path. Who could have thought of something so utterly idiotic?

And now they have started planning another bike path along Jaffa's Jerusalem Boulevard. Great, we need one there. Jerusalem Boulevard is one of the scariest places to ride a bike. I try to avoid that road as much as possible. But i cannot. It's central, it's where a lot of services are located, and i sometimes need those.
So a bike path would be great.

And planning it properly is important.

But there is just one small problem. The guys (i suspect they are guys, women wouldn't do it that way) doing the planning, are working on their own, without talking to others also planning in the same street, such as the developers of the light train and the public transport companies who are currently in the process of developing the new public transport system for Jerusalem Boulevard.

Just before Passover i participated in a meeting with the planners of the "light train's" green line, the first line to become active, supposedly in another 3-4 years. Construction has already started in Jaffa's Jerusalem Boulevard. From their presentation (they are very good at PR, that's one thing to be said about them), i realized other public transport as well as bikes do not really interest them. They are seen as a nuisance more than anything else. They are "the competition" and therefore their lives should be made difficult, rather than easy and safe. After all, if you cannot travel easily by bus or by bike, you'll take the light train.

So why cooperate?

As a result several municipal and traffic authorities and green NGO's are each planning their own thing separately and i cannot begin the image the possible result. A cyclist's bad dream, that's for sure.

Moufleta Politics

Yafo Gimmel is a mixed and by all standards rather slummy neighbourhood: Palestinian families and poorer Jewish ones (those who can afford it, move out) share dreary apartment blocks, many of them owned by the "Halamish" public housing company. Over the last few years, recent immigrants from Ethiopia have been housed in this very weak place.

The original inhabitants for whom the neighbourhood was constructed were people mostly form Bulgaria and Morocco who were living under harsh and cramped conditions in pre-gentrification Ajami.
They were happy to move out to the new blocks, where they finally had their own bathroom and kitchen (previously they had to share those with several other families).
But the blocks proved to be problematic. Shoddy construction, bad insulation, sheer size and Halamish's poor repair and maintenance standards soon turned the area into a slum.
And right in the middle of that slum there is the "Dake" orange grove, which, in spite of its romantic name grows few oranges: another "favela" like area inhabited by the Dake family, who live thereunder terrible conditions of poverty and neglect, as the municipality refuses to create a "housing plan" for the area and as a result it is impossible to undertake legal construction on the land the family has been owning for centuries. There is no good sewage system and electricity hook up is somewhat, how shall i say it, "primitive". There is much poverty and neglect in all of the area. And where there is poverty, there is crime, mostly drugs related in this case. And violence. And youth gangs of alienated kids who have lost all hope.

Those who can afford it, run away, those who still live there, mostly wish they will be able to run away, one day, perhaps. A mixture of elderly, recent and less recent migrants from Ethiopia and the Ex-Soviet Union, Palestinian families and as of late, ultra right wing yeshiva students, who believe the real struggle is no longer in the West Bank, but in the mixed cities, where they come to "strengthen the Jewish Community" and "to protect it against -God forbid- mixed marriages". Reality being that there are very few of those (less than 10 a year) doesn't bother them in their rhetoric, it sounds "good" and is easy to use when you want to create tension.

And tension exists.

"The Red Field" used to be a neglected football field used for many activities, but football wasn't one of those. Over the last year or so, the field has been beautifully renovated into an open, public sports center with basket ball courts, an out-door gym, table tennis and of course a football field.
After tension arose between the poor kids of next door "Dake" and the housing estates' kids a community worker and a multi-ethnic group of mothers started to meet and try to undertake joint positive activities. Sport and games are a good way of letting off steam and get to know each other. And it seems to be working. Something good appears to be going on in the "Red Field" as it is still known. The municipality is doing something right here.

So they selected the Red Field as the location for the "Mimouna Party". For those unfamiliar, Mimouna originates in Morocco, when, on the end of the last day of Passover the Muslim neighbours would bring their Jewish neighbours the first leavened baked goods which had been forbidden during Passover. Moufleta and colorful marzipan-like sweets are traditional. Over time, in Israel, it was turned into another popular festival of neighbors of all ethnic backgrounds, visiting neighbors and eating lots of the traditional sweets, while listening to music and dancing.

What also has become traditional, is the political ride taken by Israel's politicians who tend to visit the various public festival locations and yesterday's Jaffa version was no different. Mayor Ron Huldai, Gilad Peled (who returned to manage the Mishlama) and others, as well as the distincly Ashkenazi rabi of the yeshiva all spoke their words of unity among the Jews, most of them convienently forgetting the Palestinian presence. The talk was of a "unified city of Tel Aviv, which exists 100 years (right in Jaffa, remember?).
It was rather cold yesterday evening, so most people had dressed warmly, some over or under their traditional Moroccan dress, making a few of them looking litke glitzy stuffed bears. The guests of honour, among them muniipal coalition members Ahmad Mashrawi and Maytal Lehavi as well as ex-mk Nadia Hilou, were sitting in a traditional and very pretty Morocan tent colorfully decorated with cushions and small tables full of goodies, while the children of the hoi polloy had to wait in the cold to receive their freshly made Moufleta.
The musical theme was of the mostly "Anu Banu Artza" type of theme, with the occasional Morocan song thrown in for political correctness.
The area was guarded by border police and the little boys from Dake, who are loud and active (i am talking about 8-10 year old children) were not let in. They "might disturb the peace".

So what if you want access to your own home?

The ultra rich are buying up property in Jaffa, nothing new there.

A tiny piece of land on Mendes France street went for 1.200.000 $ not a while ago.

The neighbors had hope to buy it so they could expand their modest home, which was becoming cramped for their growing family. However, their offer was way below that of the people who finally bought the little plot; Close to the beach, opposite a park, no doubt, prime property.

What the neighbors did not expect, was that the developers of the neighboring plot would simply block the access to their own home!

One day the bulldozers came, dug a deep hole in preparation for laying the foundations for the new house and that was it. No more access.

I guess there is one law for the rich and quite another one for the poor.

As the deep hole started caving in, the neighbors put up a fence to protect their own little children, as even that had not been done by the very wealthy. They also went to court to stop further development for the time being.

The neighbors are willing to find a creative solution, but what amazesme is the ease with which these wealthy people work, the sheer violence of their activities.

How can they possible expect to live their in neighborly peace, if this is how the rich behave towards their poor neighbors?

But perhaps that is exactly it: they do not expect at all to live next door to the poor. They are probably planning for some way of getting rid of them.

Oh and no, this is not an April Fool's Day joke. The sad truth of life in Jaffa, April 1, 2009

The municipal budget for 2009, a Jaffa perspective

Today the Tel Aviv municipality will vote on its budget proposal for 2009. The municipality is making serious cuts in its educational budget, especially in the centre of Jaffa, where they will stop funding informal educational activities all together. Although the municipality is spending huge amounts (2 million!) on the Gordon pool in north Tel Aviv, the Jaffa "Neve Golan pool (our only one) get only 150.000 NIS. (Last year they got liottle less than one million) The Cherner center faces a huge cut, so they will not be able to take in the Jaffa kids, youth and adults who will no longer have a place in Neve Goland and the Lev Yafo center (which gets exactly 0 - zero- budget).
Some of this money is transferred to predominantly Jewish neighborhoods. I have no problem with these neighborhoods getting more money. I do have a problem when it happens at our expense.
The Mishlama submitted a holistic intervention program, aimed at dealing with many of the educational problems in Jaffa. the municipality refused the program, a first of its kind. Although i do have criticism on the programs approach and concept, at least they put the problem clearly up front and tried to get funding and do something.
Gilad Peled, the manager of the Mishlama, is quitting his job, in answer to the municipality's refusal to fund the program.

I'm sure the mayor's coalition will vote in favor of the budget, that bunch of sold out yes-men and yes women...

Just back from the meeting, it's most embarrassing to see the coalition members of the green party and of Meretz vote against their respective parties' ideologies the green vote for widening roads, adding cars and less use of public transport as well as in favor of adding parking lots and against using cleaner fuel.
Meretz vote against education, social aid, adding more social wrkers 9ni weakened neighborhoods against social housing etc. So much for ideology

Municipal budget lies

The Hirsch Centre in Jaffa is a special early childhood development centre providing services to Jaffa's youngest: testing, communication and play therapy, parents' groups and more. The centre treats over 1500 young children from Jaffa annually.
The municipality has decided to cut its budget by 50%, stating the different health-funds will make up for the rest. During the preparatory budget meeting the municipal representative even stated they already had a contract with all major health-funds and were about to close contracts with the others.

If the municipality had a Pinocchio nose, it would be very long now indeed.

The municipality closed a contract with exactly ONE health-fund, the tiny "Leumit", which insures about 2-3 % of Jaffa's population and on average refers 1 child per year (out of 1.500 children treated annually at the centre) to the Hirsh Centre!.
They are not even close to making deals with the other centres who have stated they absolutely refuse to do so according to the centers general manager, Ms. Amal Tatour.
Moreover, if they refer a child the parents first have to pay a fee 0f 150 NIS per hour for which they will get, after payment, a partial refund of 100 NIS. Thus every hour will cost the parent 50 NIS, which is a lot when you raise 3 kids on welfare of e.g. 2000 NIS a month!.
In addition, the healthfund will limit the amount of sessions to about 10-15, even if the child needs more.

The implication is clear: poor parents cannot afford this kind of necessary service for their young children and will not take their kids under these circumstances. At an age when many development problems can be preveted Jaffa's young children from weakened families, will not receive the necessary treatment.
This by itself is a major infringement upon the human rights of these children.

But the danger is larger than that, amal Tatour pointed out: As the majority of the Jaffa population are poor, people wil stop coming to the center. The municipality will conclyude there is no need for the services, as their will be no clients and the center will probably be closed in another few years.

The municipality points out that in other neighborhoods the services in these centers are paid for by the health funds and the population, but Tel Aviv is rich, and Jaffa is poor. So that comparison doesn't go very well.
In Jaffa the drop-out rate from the Arab public schools is 53%. And preventing drop out starts at a young age: if dyslexia and attention span disorders etc. are detected and dealt with at a young age, much suffering at a later age can be prevented.
The proposed budget cut raises serious questions.
Perhaps the municipality LIKES to keep the Jaffa population poor and voiceless?

Leib Ben Sara Street

Leib Ben Sara is one of those small dead-end alleys in Jaffa, close to what is now a military court. Until 1948 the building of the military court was a Palestinian family home. Many of the homes in the street were constructed during the period of the British mandate by middle class families. As part of the Naqbe the homes were "registered" (=stolen) by the Israel Land Authority as "left property" and some were rented out to people by means of a public housing company.
Others were "given" to the army, which uses them up to this very day. Quite a few old Jaffa buildings are in use by the army. "Occupied" would be a good term to describe it.
Many people have forgotten these buildings should really be put to the use of the local Arab community by means of the waqf or the churches, but that's not what i want to write about here. That's part of a larger story, i should pay attention to. It's just that the military court is located in this small street.

The first part (close to the court) of the street is paved, The rest is full of potholes which fill up with water during the rainy period and turn the street into dangerous walking and driving territory. My elderly friend Suham, who lives there, tripped a few times and as a result has to be hospitalised.
Some 5 years ago the residents asked the municipality to intervene and carry out the necessary and long overdue repairs. Promises were made, but nothing happened.

Suham decided to do something about it and organised a petition which was signed by all residents and sent out to Gilad Peled, the Mishlama's (Jaffa's impotent sub-municipality) head. Hopefully, in this period of local elections something will be done about it.

An answer had not yet been provided. The street is small, paving it properly shouldn't be a problem. Or at least filling up the pot-holes immedediately and carry out all the necessaru repairs within a few days.
But then, this is Jaffa and we are talking about an alley not popular with the wealthy new-comers. An area not favoured by the gentrifiers. But perhaps, with the elections coming, up the municipality will do something about it. Huldai is trying to prove he has improved a lot in Jaffa, invested a lot in the infrastructure. Some of these claims are true, but the investments have been made only where the very wealthy live and that is not Leib Ben Sara street.