You’ve got to wonder about a system that can reduce a grown man to tears. Arnona, ah a word that strikes fear into new olim…to say nothing, I’m sure about veteran Israelis. Arnona is the Hebrew word for property tax. In a bizarre reversal from everything we understand, property taxes in Israel are the responsibility of the tenant, not the owner of the property. To make it more confusing is the elusive ‘discount’ on arnona that is alluded to be available to those in more difficult financial circumstances. Basically most of the people I know here would put themselves in that category!
The whole arnona issue has increased our stress level astronomically – in fact it brought my 200 some odd pound 6′ tall husband to tears today. There is an archaic system here – level upon level of bureacracy, form upon form to fill out, office upon office to visit…and even though they say they want immigrants to come, they make almost no attempt to ease the entry. Very few people in the municipal office speak English, none of the forms are in English, and the person at the entrance to the discount area will only let you in if they feel that you have all of the necessary paperwork but will not tell you what that might be. Every time we’ve gone, it’s been a different set of papers that we are missing. Thankfully at one point Joe said that he would take care of the issue. Whew! He seemed clear, strong, and willing to sit solidly at the desk until the issue was resolved. Well, maybe he would have if they had let him in so he could sit at one of those desks in a timely manner so we could have opened a file so we could have been considered for the discount. We started the procedure in May of last year and last week (one year and one month after we first stepped foot in their offices) we got a letter that said that although we now have all of the requisite paperwork (oh no, wait, there’s one more piece of paper we’re missing) since we didn’t get all the paperwork in before January we have been disqualified.
Thank you, municipality of Jerusalem for once again making us wonder what the frig we were thinking to give up everything we knew to throw our lot in with this country.
