Refining the interests of the Central Uusimaa Social and Health Services Joint Authority

Joining Keusote was one of the biggest decisions made by the municipality of Tuusula in recent years. Keusote is significant both in terms of its finances and in terms of the daily and critical services provided to residents. 

Keusote has been operating at full capacity for a year. Now is a good time to look both back and forward. As expected, the early stages have been challenging, as evidenced by the public discussions about higher-than-planned costs and budget overruns. The National Coalition Party’s council group sees no need to panic in the face of this news. Merging a large organisation into an efficient service organisation takes time. We believe that the decision to join Keusote was the right one. 

Although the decision to join has been made, we believe that the municipal federation still has important decisions ahead of it. These decisions must be able to respond to rising costs in a restrained and economical manner to the increasing need for services, while still ensuring a sufficiently high level of service quality. Such decisions are still needed, for example, for the effective management of the organisation, financial monitoring, the acquisition and implementation of key systems, the abandonment of municipal or municipal boundaries, the appropriate structure of the organisation, harmonising services and service processes in accordance with best practices, service eligibility criteria and content, digitising services, and fine-tuning the service network, to name but a few. In the coming years, Keusote will therefore have to make many decisions that are not easy and may not be entirely pleasant. 

To address these challenges, we in the coalition council group believe that Tuusula municipality’s representation of its interests must also be sharpened and that communication supporting this between Keusote and the municipality, as well as between Keusote and the municipality’s elected representatives, must be developed. It is not enough for the municipality to have three elected representatives on Keusote’s board, which is a highly challenging and critical position for Keusote’s operations. We are not criticising these individuals, but simply assessing this channel as insufficient for us, as municipal decision-makers, to know enough about what is going on at Keusote. Even though we made the decision to join Keusote, we did not want the flow of information to elected representatives to be significantly weakened in this way and our influence to be lost to the top management of the municipal association and too few elected representatives. 

We are therefore proposing that the municipal executive committee prepare and submit to the council for decision a set of internal municipal procedures specifically designed to protect Keusote’s interests, ensuring, among other things, that 

Matters identified as essential for preparation or decision-making in Keusote, the preparatory stages thereof and essential financial information shall be presented in good time to the municipal political leadership group, and the
political leadership group or municipal executive board shall present these matters to the council for discussion, etc., in a manner deemed appropriate, for example by the mayor or a representative of Keusote. In a manner deemed appropriate, for example by the mayor or a representative of Keusote, and
the councillors, council groups and council shall have the opportunity, prior to the decisive stages of preparation, to hear and advise the few representatives of the municipality of Tuusula who hold key positions in Keusote, even though Keusote’s decision-making cannot be delegated to the councils of its member municipalities. When
the municipality joined the municipal federation, a significant part of the decision-making on basic municipal services was transferred further away from the residents, thus effectively reducing important transparency. We believe that the measures proposed in our initiative will also increase/restore transparency in a matter that is very important to residents.

This content has been translated using AI

Answer

1