San Diego, CA (special) -- Four Jewish mayors and two Arab mayors from Israel toured San Diego July 17-21, learning how various local officials contend with problems comparable to the ones they must deal with at home.

For example, how San Diego and Tijuana structure their relationship may hold clues to how cities in Israel and neighboring Arab countries should develop regional insitutions.Likewise, San Diego's privatization of trash disposal may be a model for municipal budget-stretching in Israel. 

The exchange of ideas was not solely one-way. There were roundtable discussions about which duties officials of the two countries decide to assign to their staffs and which responsibilities they reserve for themselves.  The mayors were brought to the United States by the Agency for International Development (US AID). Following a week-long orientation in Washington D.C., they flew to San Diego for meetings with county Supervisor Ron Roberts and La Mesa Mayor Art Madrid as well as with staff members for local legislators, the San Diego Unified School District, the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) and the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce. Then the mayors continued their three-week U.S. tour by flying to a meeting of Sister Cities International in Little Rock, Ark., and on to Rhode Island before heading home. In Roberts, the Israeli mayors met a county supervisor who wants to be mayor and in Madrid, they met a mayor who wants to be a county supervisor.  .

Mayors Mirone of Afula, Kasim of Tira, Ma- Yafit of Oranit, Moyal of Sderot and Barda of Migdal Haemek by Old Town Trolley stop at San Diego's Horton Plaza Shopping Center.

Roberts is running to succeed Mayor Susan Golding of San Diego, who is prohibited from succeeding herself for a third term. Madrid is seeking to displace a colleague of Roberts on the 5-member San Diego Board of Supervisors, Dianne Jacob.

San Diegans met mayors from cities ranging in size from 5,000 to 40,000. The Arabs included Khalil Kasim, mayor of Tira, a city of 20,000, and Dr. Mohammad Abou Foul, chairman of the Local Council of Jatt, which is a village of 8,000. Smaller cities in Israel do not have anyone designated as mayor, but instead are run by local councils headed by a chairman.

The Jewish delegation included Itzhak Mirone, mayor of Afula, which has 40,000 residents; Eliyahu Barda, mayor of Migdal Haemek with 35,000 residents; Eli Moyal, mayor of Sderot with 23,000 residents, and Zvika Ma-Yafit, local council chairman of Oranit with 5,000 residents.

Roberts' description of how San Diego County sold off rights to its landfills and privatized the whole trash business seemed to amaze the Israeli mayors, who are used to thinking of the disposal of garbage as one of those necessary and unpopular chores with which governments are saddled. 

"We had a trash system that we were operating that was losing $35 million per year," Roberts said. "We have sold it off for $184 million, privatized it."

Answering a flurry of questions, the supervisor explained that the company which operates the landfills charges fees to companies which haul the trash there to dump. In turn, the trash hauling companies contract with businesses and residences to pick up the garbage.

But what if someone refused to pay and the trash started to pile up? questioned one of the Israeli mayors.

"The health department will be on them in short order," Roberts replied.

Madrid, mayor of La Mesa, is also the chairman of the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), which is the regional planning authority. He said a big problem for planners is that politicians tend to prefer to spend money on projects which can show immediate results to the electorate. "They want instant gratification, so what you end up doing is creating humungous problems for those who follow us," Madrid said. A few of the Israeli mayors who reported that their cities had deteriorated from neglect under their predecessors nodded enthusiastically in agreement. By and large, Israelis are known for their informal ways, and Madrid seemed to strike a note of commonalilty when he told them that La Mesa has approximately 58,000 residents, "and my philosophy is that I have 58,000 bosses. I can't make them all happy but that is how many people I report to."

Dr. Mohammad Abou Foul of Jatt on his cellphone in Balboa Park.

He said whereas other heads of cities are "very impressed with the title," he wears casual clothes most of the time and "I answer all my telephone calls, and I do all my own xeroxing."

Mike McLaughlin, SANDAG's director of land use planning, told the mayors that joint Tijuana-San Diego projects used to be bogged down in the double bureaucracy of Tijuana having to receive approvals from Mexico's Foreign Ministry in Mexico City and San Diego being required to seek approvals for any cross-border agreements through the U.S.State Department in Washington D.C.

Mexico's consul-general in San Diego sits as an ex-officio member of SANDAG's board of directors and this, "in essence provided a diplomatic mechanism to allow coordination to take place across the border without going back to Washington D.C. or Mexico City," McLaughlin said. "Because of the consul-general using a diplomatic power, he short-circuited the process. He created a border liaison mechanism." McLaughlin said the U.S. consul-general in Tijuana operates similarly.

Of what practicality is this?

"The issue of water -- like San Diego, Tijuana imports 90 percent of its water," McLaughlin said. "Its pipelines come along the international boundary (from the east). Ours comes (from the north) but when they get here, they don't connect (with Tijuana's).

"Because Southern California is prone to earthquakes, there is a major worry that an earthquake in the Los Angeles area could disrupt our water supply system," the land planning official added. "We have enough storage capacity to survive for 45 days.To rebuild after an earthquake would take substantially longer than 45 days to get the water supply back."

He said the international dynamics previously prevented water agencies in the two adjoining cities from working out emergency plans. Today, however, "we now have water agencies for the first time in relatively advanced stages of planning for connecting emergency supply programs. Once they do that, it is not much a stretch to talk about dual water supply systems that work back
and forth across the border as well."

McLaughlin also reviewed the problem that San Diego has when untreated sewage from Tijuana flows across the international border.

"We have the same problem," commented Abou Foul of Jatt. "When I see Tijuana and San Diego, I remember what we have. We have six villages near my village. I can spend a lot of money to clean the river, but if I don't clean the river on the other side, I do nothing. If I want to do something good, I must devise a regional solution with the Palestinian Authority."

Further complicating the water issue, said Mayor Mirone of Afula, is that cities in Israel and the Palestinian Authority "are using the same sources of water -- the aquifers. Once we are pumping water in Afula, it affects the Authority and vice versa." Angelika Villagrana, director of the public policy division of the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce, reviewed for the mayors how businesses in this area band together to support or oppose legislation that is being considered at the federal, state or local levels of government. Zvika Ma-Yafit, local chairman of Oranit, asked why such international companies as Sanyo, Sony,

Khalil Kasim of  Tira and Zvika Ma-Yafit  of Oranit in San Diego's Balboa Park.  Khalil purchased a caricature from a sidewalk artist.

and Kyocera would be interested in being a member of a local chamber of commerce.

She responded that the chamber lobbies the federal government concerning regulations for how business is conducted under the North American Free Trade Agreement. Furthermore, she said, local or state legislation may adversely affect their business and they may wish to join a coalition to oppoose it. For example, she said, "we are in a big battle with our governor on overtime reform. He wanted to take us back to the old ages."

Another meeeting featured Greg Stein, local staff chief to Congressman Brian Bilbray; Jamie Zuieback, a former aide to Supervisor Diane Jacob, and Kelly Rudiger Bingham, a Bilbray staffer who worked for Pete Wilson while he was California's governor.

They told the mayors how typically an officeholder will have a field office in his or her district and another office at the seat of government, whether it be in Washington, Sacramento or in downtown San Diego.  The aides said that there is a high degree of coordination among the staffs of political officeholders in order to handle the problems of constituents or to build coalitions to support or oppose legislation. Yitzhak Mirone, mayor of Afula, expressed surprise how much emphasis is placed on "lobbying" in the United States --whether it be by private groups or by governmental agencies trying to influence decision makers at other levels. "Lobbying in Israel is not considered nice or

Angelika Villagrana, foreground, explains services of the San Diego Chamber of  Commerce to Mohammad Abou Foul of Jatt and Eli Moyal of Sderot

legitimate," Mirone said. "I was surprised that lobbying here is considered legitimate."

Abou Foul, the local chairman of Jatt, suggested that whereas people try to influence decision-making there too, "it is not so obvious in Israel."

Stein said Cogressman Bilbray's field office is designed to provide for constituents "an individual face on the gigantic and incomprehensible federal government." He said his office often helps people whose Social Security checks have been lost or arrive late.

Mirone expressed surprise that the offices deal with problems at such an individual level.

Besides engaging in such seminars, the Israeli mayors were hosted for a tour of San Diego by the owners of the Old Town Trolley. Because the mayors had lodged at the Westgate Hotel adjacent to San Diego's City Hall, they boarded at the trolley stop at the Horton Plaza Shopping Center. They chose to disembark in Coronado so they could wander through the Hotel del Coronado and see where Marilyn Monroe made the movie Some Like It Hot.  The mayors also got off in Balboa Park where they went in separate directions to explore the many

Zvika Ma-Yafit of Oranit, right, discourses  with American Jewish Committee members Paul Meyer and Paula Siegel during reception in San Diego

museums according to their own interests. Mayors Khalil Kasim of Tira and Eli Moyal of Sderot returned to the trolley toting caricatures of themselves made by a sidewalk artist. After visiting the House of Israel, Mayor Abou Foul of Jatt expressed disappointment that the exhibits there dealt almost exclusively with Israel's Jewish population, mentioning very little, if anything, about the Arab citizens of Israel.

During their stay in San Diego, the mayors also were entertained at a reception hosted jointly by the San Diego chapter of the American Jewish Committee and by the International Visitors Council. It was held in the Banker's Hill home of Lucy Goldman.

The International Visitors Council, which is a volunteer arm of the United States Agency for International Development, also conducted an introductory seminar for the mayors. The council's former president, Dean Crowder, oriented the mayors about San Diego's geography, economy and population.