Interior Minister mulls merging Tel Aviv, Bat Yam

Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai supports unifying the municipalities.

Today, one week after Minister of the Interior Gideon Sa'ar caused a stir by ordering Tel Aviv supermarkets not to open on the Sabbath, he announced that he intended to consider a change in the boundaries between Tel Aviv-Jaffa and its southern neighboring city, Bat Yam, and in the distribution of revenues between them. "The Minister of the Interior has decided to appoint an investigative committee on the subject of the boundaries that will consider a union between the two cities, or alternatively, the redistribution of revenues between the two cities," Sa'ar stated today. He was responding to a petition by Bat Yam on the distribution of revenues between it and Tel Aviv.

The Bat Yam municipality petitioned the High Court of Justice last March, demanding that the Ministry of the Interior exercise its authority by examining the distribution of revenues between Tel Aviv and its neighboring cities. The petition asserts that objective data, including among other things historical distortions in the division of land in the Dan Region; the limited geographic area of Bat Yam; an extremely high population density; a shortage of business and commercial space; and the proximity of Bat Yam to Tel Aviv have greatly restricted Bat Yam's options for generating revenues from municipal property taxes and development fees. In its petition, filed by attorneys Prof. Ariel Bendor and Dr. Yisgav Nakdimon, Bat Yam also argued that because of this situation, municipal spending per resident in Bat Yam is lower than in the neighboring cities.

In its response to the Sa'ar's statement, the Tel Aviv municipality said today, "As it has said before, the mayor of Tel Aviv (Ron Huldai) supports unifying the municipalities. No other proposal meets the test of logic."

The issue of the distribution of revenues and a change in the boundaries between cities and communities is a very controversial one that many ministers of the interior have in the past refrained from dealing with. In recent years, dozens of committees have been formed to investigate a change in the boundaries or in the distribution of revenues between various places in Israel. Time after time, however, the committees have completed their work without any operative decisions being made by the ministers in charge of the Ministry of the Interior. In recent months, Sa'ar has made a number of decisions on this matter. Among them was a decision to enlarge the municipal boundaries of Netanya by giving it 6,095 dunam (1,523.75 acres) taken from the areas of its neighboring regional councils: Hof Hasharon, Lev Hasharon, and Emek Hefer. While the latter two regional councils have agreed to sign agreements to transfer the areas, Hof Hasharon regards the transfer as coercion, because the parties have not reached agreement on the issue to date.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 8, 2014

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2014

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