Jerusalem finally has a budget for 2020

The budget is approved after a five-month delay – due to the lack of a national government and the coronavirus restrictions.

By PEGGY CIDOR
MAYOR MOSHE LION (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
MAYOR MOSHE LION
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
After a five-month delay – due to the lack of a national government and the coronavirus restrictions – Jerusalem finally has a budget for 2020. The budget, the city’s biggest ever, still needs to be approved by the council’s local finance committee and then presented and approved by the city council. It stands at NIS 11.2 billion, compared to last year’s NIS 9.6b. budget. Of the total figure, NIS 4.4b. is for infrastructure development.
The committee and council approvals are a mere formality, since with a large coalition of 22 council members, Mayor Moshe Lion is not expecting anything to get in the way of green-lighting this budget.
According to Lion, 49% of the budget is for education, welfare and community affairs, while 14% of it is for cleaning and sanitation projects. Added to this is the special grant for the capital that the Finance Ministry approves every year, coming in this time at NIS 822 million.
Lion is continuing to put an emphasis on cleanliness and urban aesthetics, adding more flowers and decorating more squares across the city, along with continuing adding benches along main streets and adding more green areas – mostly parks. Attention will also be given to renovating sidewalks in most neighborhoods.
The allocation of this record budget means that projects that have been launched already last year – like the city cleaning project – will continue and cover even more areas.
Based on this budget, the municipality will focus on the following topics, in addition to issues related to the coronavirus:
Construction of schools for all sectors in the city, including the eastern side; a special program for reducing violence and dropouts among the Arab sector, as well as academic programs for high schools; expanding seniors’ programs in the wake of their new needs due to the coronavirus crisis; developing employment centers for students in all the academic campuses; adding parks in several neighborhoods; augmenting cleaning and sanitation staff; building three new public pools and sports centers in Pisgat Ze’ev and in French Hill; festivals; supporting projects for local artists, tourism projects for the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) sector and lots of projects to improve traffic, including additional light rail lines and roads; as for the eastern side, the municipality has 16 new roads planned with one large road connecting several Arab neighborhoods; a bicycle path that will run through all the city; and – perhaps one of the best pieces of news this year: enabling two new operators of public buses, beside Egged, to significantly improve public transportation.