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Cities to protest budget cuts with Jerusalem traffic jam
By Lior Dattel?
Tags: Israel News

The first shot in the battle by local governments against the draft state budget for 2009-2010 is to be fired tomorrow, when the Union of Local Authorities dispatches a convoy of municipal garbage trucks and pickups from around the country to tangle up traffic heading into Jerusalem.

The ULA says hundreds of vehicles are expected to join the protest, bearing banners accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of balancing the national budget on the backs of local governments. "Bibi is ruining the local authorities again" is one sample slogan for the banners, along with "Bibi wants citizens to pay the price."

The organization plans to pitch a "protest tent" in the traditional location for such things, across from the Prime Minister's Office, and to use it for a press conference featuring mayors from around the country.
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ULA officials acknowledge the inconvenience that will result from blocking the few and narrow traffic arteries leading to the capital. They advise avoiding these roads and suggest that anyone traveling abroad tomorrow should stay near Ben-Gurion International Airport tonight.

"Perhaps it will inconvenience Israelis for one day, but we will rescue on their behalf the local authorities, which see to their welfare every day. We will prevent the prime minister from carrying out his plan to raise the municipal taxes paid by every resident in order to pay for the government's failures," said the ULA's chairman and Ma'alot-Tarshiha's mayor, Shlomo Buchbut.

In June the ULA said the cuts to local government budgets in the 2009-2010 state budget will lead to more than 6,000 dismissals and cause serious financial difficulties for 85 localities.
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