Soooooooo, just a quickie here to share some good fortune. Well actually, it was a mistake that has been corrected, and is thus NOW a good fortune. As you know, we are "OLIM", new immigrants. My hubby grew up here, but because I didn't, we are considered a family of olim, and have thus received many benefits. In our first 7 months here, we had rent subsidy, we got a break with something to do with the mortgage of our home, and now.............something new and unexpected.
Our little guy is in Gan (preschool) at the "Trom chova" level. He's 4. The gan cost to city residents is almost the equivalent of $200 a month. We had heard about the olim discount, and I had given all of my paperwork to the city upon registration, but thought when it didn't appear in our bills that our first year was up and so was our discount.
Lo' and behold, I saw an email mentioning that olim who arrived after 2005 need to make sure to register for their discount for next year.
"WHAT,??? for NEXT year? Should I be getting it THIS year???" I asked. I wasn't sure, and was surprised to see that maybe we should.
Well, today, hubby went in to the city office and explained with all of our paperwork that we think we should have gotten the discount...................which is 90% mind you, meaning, we pay ONLY 10%!!! And would you believe it, they agreed and proceeded to ADD UP the amount of money that THEY owed US!!! It came to about 3500 NIS, a bit shy of a thousand dollars!!! They couldn't give us back the cash, but they DID apply it to the gan fees (at 90% discount) for the rest of the year, and they applied it to our Arnona, municipal tax, for the next 5 months or so!!! very very cool.................
