TOV on the City Council meeting and vote

Message from TOV Bet Shemesh regarding yesterday's City Council meeting and vote about RBS C/G/3

What is RBS Gimmel?
Ramat Bet Shemesh Gimmel is the designation for the area just over the mountain across the street from Ramat Shilo. It is accessed by the long road up the mountain from the kikar on the entrance to Ramat Aleph. In fact, if you drive up that road, you will see that ALL the roads of Ramat Gimmel are already paved!! It is literally a city with no buildings.
(Note: there is actually RBS Gimmel A and RBS Gimmel B. For this discussion we are discussing RBS Gimmel A only as that is the current area in the discussion.)
This area has been designated by the Misrad Hashikun and the Israel Land Authority as the next stage in the development of Bet Shemesh. Remember, Bet Shemesh 20 years ago had about 35,000 people and today it has over 90,000 people. It is truly a growing city. RBS Gimmel A will have 2,200 housing units. Of this, over 170 are "Bnei Betichah", about 600 are "Micraz Hamishtakan - low income housing", and the rest (1500) are assorted building and cottages.

What has the "fight" been about?
The contention over this land has been that the various populations of the city have been trying to allocate as much of this land as possible for "their people". The Chareidi population wants land for their tzibur, the Dati Leumi population wants for their tzibbur, and we could name many other "groups" that want a piece of the pie. This division has caused the development of RBS Gimmel to stall many times over the last ten years.
Mayor Abutbol has made it his priority to grow Bet Shemesh. Growth includes more people, more housing, more jobs and more building. As the battle lines were drawn between the various political parties in the city the issue got very contentious and personal.
A few weeks ago, the Mayor seemingly reached an agreement with all the parties to divide RBS Gimmel into three sections - Charedi, Dati-Leumi, and Chiloni/General. All the parties signed on this agreement and the process started to move forward.
Now comes the issue.
The Israel Land Authority which actually issues the tenders for the building, refused to include this agreement into their tenders. They maintain it is illegal to set aside certain land for only a certain population. The Mayor tried very hard to push the issue, but they did not budge and the tenders were issued without any designation as to the target population.
A number of parties in the city council felt that the Mayor was reneging on his agreement and "plotting" to make RBS Gimmel "Charedi".
In fact, when the Mayor distributed the tenders to kablanim last week, he specifically included his "recommendations" for which tzibbur each piece of land should be allocated.

An emergency vote was called by some members of the city council to attempt to stall/cancel the building of RBS Gimmel.
This was the vote that took place last night.
The vote ended as follows:
10 votes to continue building - Agudah/Degel Hatorah - 5, Shas - 3, Balaish - 1, Tov - 1
9 votes to stop building - Mafdal - 3, Avodah - 1, Likud - 2, Dor Achar - 2, Moti Cohen - 1

Why did TOV vote for RBS Gimmel?
Tov's position is that Bet Shemesh must continue to grow. We can not grow as a city without building and RBS Gimmel is the next step in this growth process. "Our" tzibbur, as well as other tzibburim need more affordable housing and more space. RBS Gimmel is the logical solution to this problem.

Is TOV concerned about the population that will come to RBS Gimmel?
Of course we are. However, the solution is not to stop the building. The solution is to market the area to the people who we want. (Details will be forthcoming on TOV's group that is forming to market and purchase homes in Gimmel). For those who are more concerned, we can only tell you that in the Mayor's and the city council's perfect world, RBS Gimmel will end up looking very similar to the population of RBS Aleph.

Did the Mayor and others in the city council act and say the appropriate things in regards to this issue?
Absolutely not. Many things could have been done, said, and presented in much better and nicer way. In fact, the protests that were organized were very helpful in driving home this point! People were upset and had a right to be heard. We personally sat with the Mayor for a number of hours (one on one) on Tuesday night. We feel that he now realizes that he vastly underestimated the concerns of many of the residents and he is now working to make sure he does a better job communicating and getting his message across. Specifically, including everyone in these types of decisions and not letting other people in the city council speak on his behalf. Therefore, we still feel that the building must go on. You can not make major decisions that affect the future of the city based on personal disagreements or insults. We need to fix the issues and move forward.

TOV has now joined the Mayors coalition.
Despite reports otherwise, we were offered to join the coalition over eight months ago. Because of the size (14) of the coalition at that time, it did not make political sense to join. We had more say and more opportunities to have input as the opposition. Now that the Mafdal is no longer in the coalition, there is more room for us to have a say from within the coalition. We therefore decided the time was right to join. This was NOT a quid-pro-quo from the mayor for our vote. We voted based on our conviction and opinion.

So to summarize, while the process was not even close to perfect and while many mistakes were made, TOV feels that for the good of Bet Shemesh, building in RBS Gimmel should continue.

We hope to be able to continue to serve our voters and all the residents of Bet Shemesh in the future.
Feel free to email with any questions.
Thank you.
TOV Bet Shemesh