Arne O. Holm says The Municipal Crisis: I Had to Go to Finland to Find a Happy Mayor
Not quite like other mayors, Jari Rantapelkonen in Sodankylä. (Photo: Trine Jonassen).
Comment: He had long been left in my notebook, the mayor of Finnish Sodankylä. Time and again, he lost out to comments on more critical conditions in the North. But he didn't give up. Like a blister, he called for my attention.
This is a comment written by a member of the editorial staff. All views expressed are the writer's own.
I knew I had to address him at some point. I turn back a few pages to notes made while it was still fall in Northern Finland. The bad news could not be paused, but now they will have to wait, in favor of a municipal leader who is essentially happy with the status quo.
The lopsided and unfair
There aren't many of those. They rarely appear on my path, at least. Journalism, reports, as well as comments, are usually about the lopsided and the unfair.
Therefore, a few weeks have passed since I met Mayor Jari Rantapelkonen. I have visited Finnish Lapland many times, but I've never stopped in Sodankylä before. There was no obvious reason to stop here, in a municipality geographically placed between the more famous Inari and the well-known Rovaniemi, home of the Santa Claus village.
The fact that Finland is now a member of NATO made it a more natural stop. Sodankylä is home to the Finnish Jaeger Brigade, a military force ready to defend Finland 24 hours a day, year-round. The military's answer to a 7/11 store, if you will, strategically located right on the border with Russia, and now in increasing cooperation with the Norwegian military.
He called for my attention like a blister.
The municipality also hosts another major employer, Boliden Kevitsa, a mining company that produces what is often characterized as critical minerals. Minerals that are crucial components in the technology we surround ourselves with, such as nickel, copper, cobalt, and platinum. They are also essential for the defense industry.
The gigantic open-cast mine employs 500 people and delivers solid profits to its owners, who are mainly international investors.
Spacious
Little is felt of both the mining industry and the Jaeger Brigade in the streets of Sodankylä, Finland's second-largest municipality in terms of area. That entails a lot of room for each of its 8,100 inhabitants.
And nature and space are precisely what the inhabitants value the most, according to Jari Rantapelkonen.
"Nature is the most important value," he says, pointing to a photo of the river Kitinen, which flows through the municipality. "It is key to why people live here."
Now, investors want to expand the mine, which the mayor is not sure is a good idea. And not just because such an expansion would involve an extensive interference with nature.
The mayor is leading a municipality with no unemployment. In other words, there are no available workers ready to 'move into' a new mine.
Northern Norwegian municipalities also have no unemployment when they invite international companies to build new industries. It is dreams of growth that drive them.
The parking lot outside Sodankylä City Hall is not like other municipal parking lots. (Photo: Astri Edvardsen)
It is dreams of growth that drive them.
Challenging for the municipality
With a background in the Finnish Defense Forces, Rantapelkonen has a distinct perspective. He has also calculated what municipal income would derive from a larger mine. The state takes most of it, a whopping 80 percent, according to Rantapelkonen. And he is left with the costs, which include commuting. Today, only 60 percent of those who work in the mine work and pay their taxes in Sodankylä.
"It is too challenging for the municipality to serve more people."
To the north and south of Sodankÿla, tourists are arriving in droves, particularly from Asian countries. They are on the hunt for Northern Lights and Christmas spirit in Rovaniemi and Inari.
But Jari Rantepelkonen does not want to focus on tourism either. Quite the opposite. Tourism disturbs the harmony in the municipality. And the nature. But how is it possible to avoid tourism when the municipality is surrounded by tourists in all directions?
"Simple," replies the mayor. "We offer them no services."
So what is the alternative for a municipality in Finnish Lapland that declines both mining and tourism?
"The alternative is to continue as before, because that is working well," says Jari Rantepelkonen.
Nature is the most important value to us.
Have I met a romantic deep in the Finnish forests?
Absolutely not.
Retired Lt. Colonel
Jari Rantapelkonen is a retired lieutenant colonel from the Finnish Defence Forces and professor emeritus at the National Defence University in Helsinki. He has served in Afghanistan, the Balkans, and the Middle East and is an expert in military leadership.
Yet, eventually, he wanted to do something else, something more, and moved from Southern Finland to the North to become mayor.
"There are no organisations that do as much for people as the municipalities," he says about his own motivation for the geographical and professional shift.
Therefore, I'm sure you, the reader, understand why I could no longer hide Jari Rantepelkonen in my notebook. A municipal leader who does not crave eternal growth but listens to a population that he firmly claims is fine the way it is.
"A municipality's task is to take care of its inhabitants and support the business sector," says Jari Rantepelkonen.
Neither more nor less.
