The Misgav - and Environmental Planning

In the Misgav, we had a chance to meet with Mayor Erez Kreisler and with Mr. Baruch Campano, the Director of the Environmental Branch for the Misgav Regional Council (top photo). The Misgav region has a reputation for innovative, responsible and accountable leadership.

The Misgav region is shown in green in the bottom photo. What is immediately noticeably is that the parts of the region are quite dispersed and indeed some portions of the region are like islands. The Misgav region borders on 24 municipalities. Examples include communities like Sakhnin and Arrabeh which are arab municipalities. It makes for a complex interrelationship among communities, and it means that issues like water, sewage and roads must all be worked out together.

Approximately half of the Misgav Region budget goes toward education, and very different from Manitoba, where education is part of a School Board budget, the Regional Council has this responsibility as well as the responsibility for road, water sewer infrastructure and for building permits etc.

In Misgav, they have developed a process for looking at environmental issues which uses "open space technology" to bring people together to develop a strategic plan for the area. From this process they have developed four priorities 1) education; 2) management of green spaces (includes agriculture and makes up 90% of the municipality); 3) cooperation between Jews and Arabs and 4) Economic Development. Erez Kreisler, the Mayor, talked of the need to move toward more cooperative win-win solutions for the area.