During a Tiveria City Council meeting on Tuesday to discuss the city’s budget, Mayor Ron Kobi was hopeful the budget for 2019 would be passed, but the members of the opposition bloc, numbering eight councilmen, used their political weight and blocked the budget.

The balance of power changed last night against Ron Kobi, after councilman Michael Lehrer, who entered the coalition after elections and formation of Ron Kobi’s coalition, was absent from the meeting. In light of this, the mayor had only six backers during the meeting against eight members of the opposition. Michael Lehrer, who defected from David Azoulai’s faction, was absent due to disagreements over the 2019 budget and it is unclear whether he will return to the opposition officially.

In any case, Mayor Ron Kobi asked the budget proposal to raise municipal taxes to residents and businesses by almost 10 percent, to cut NIS 7 million in the education budget, NIS 4 million from the welfare budget, and to erase the Jewish cultural budget to zero.

The eight opposition members opposed the proposal, and as expected it fell. The tone of the meeting was high, the council members claimed that the mayor called them derogatory names. During the meeting, the former mayor and council member Yossi Ben David spoke for more than an hour. He called on the mayor to contact Interior Minister Aryeh Deri and ask for help in the city.

Ben David demanded that Mayor Ron Kobi apologize for calling him ‘screwed up’. “You tend to blame me for all your failures, but on my shift for five years all the workers got a salary on time, I did not raise municipal taxes even though the deficit was bigger,” Ben David said in his speech. “And you first try to hurt businesses and tenants. You wrote to hotels and businesses that will now have to clear their own garbage, and they will also have to pay increased municipal taxes and they will also take up garbage.”

Councilmen Raphael Triblesi of the Bayit Yehudi party, who leads the opposition bloc, said that “this is a bad budget unlike any other in the history of the city of Tiveria.”

Degel Hatorah Councilman Dor Ochana said that the mayor, who called him “Lexus” because of the type of car he was using, would have to pay him compensation as part of a libel suit filed against him. “I will write on the vehicle: ‘Thank you Ron Kobi for the new vehicle,'” he said.

At the council meeting, a member of the council, attorney Menahem Ben Elisha, who represents HaGaon HaRav Dov Kook Shlita, raised the fact that the Midrasha structure of Rabbi Yechiel Lazarovich was facing a demolition order, adding, “This is a shul and its school for boys who come every evening to receive social support and educational activities.”

Mayor Kobi asked that the proposal be rejected because the building was illegal, and the NGO entered it without authorization. In the discussion it was agreed that the matter of NGO of the rabbi would be transferred to the allocations committee.

Thereafter, a vote was held on the 2019 budget, and as expected, the proposal fell in an 8 to 6 vote.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)