GUEST COMMENT: Imagine being lucky enough to live in one of the richest municipalities in the world’s richest country. The wealth in Suldal is there to touch and feel, no matter which way you turn. No wonder some are envious and think the municipality should share more.
The money has flowed into Suldal lately. Mayor Gerd Helen Bø and the other politicians have an economic leeway like few others. But money cannot solve everything. Photo: Pål ChristensenPublished: Published:
Less than 20 minutes ago
Like other rich people, Suldal cannot move to Switzerland because the state’s long fingers are looking for the money bin.
Last year, Suldal municipality spent NOK 274 million. If you divide that among the 3,800 of us who live in the country’s largest power municipality, it comes to NOK 72,000 per person.
Is it too much? For sacrificing reindeer pastures, hunting lodges, salmon and river fathers…
According to KS’s report, Suldal, the municipality in Rogaland with the largest economic scope last year, nationally only beaten by Aukra.
Suldal contributed a great deal to value creation, light and heat in the land of Norway. The municipality also shares, as all rich municipalities are obliged to do through the income equalization system. Nevertheless, there is a regular desire that these municipalities must share even more, either via the state or through amalgamation with poorer neighboring municipalities.
No Fjordland here, no!
Six days a week, my parents and many other old people living at home have food delivered to their door. Smoky fresh, freshly prepared food with all kinds of accessories. And there’s always dessert. The food is prepared in a kitchen at Vinjarheim in Suldalsosen. The menu is very varied and everything is made from scratch, with recipes adapted to the older generation. Because the old will have a good time in Suldal.
Therefore, the nursing home resident, who was around ten years younger than me, had to pay with his life. This spring, the nursing home was knocked down by large excavators, bit by bit. What remains is a substantial construction pit where, over the next two years, a hyper-modern nursing home will be built at a cost of NOK 424 million. The project went ahead budget blow of 130 million, but this can be taken straight in Suldal.
Suldal can afford a Rolls-Royce. The elected officials adorn themselves with words like the Suldal standard. In Suldal, we have a cultural center and library of a standard that few small municipalities can match. At the back is a luxurious outdoor patio in stone. We have two sports halls and not least Suldal Bad, which is designed for both swimming and swimming.
Quietly, the municipality is becoming a laboratory for solar power. Installers of solar panels circle around Suldal in large swarms. Due to the municipality’s favorable support schemes, roof after roof get solar panels, both residential buildings and commercial buildings. More and more people in the hydropower mecca have seen the sun at work to reduce their electricity bills for the winter.
You also get municipal support for the installation of heat pumps. Suldal shares with his own and the cottage suld beer, and shows the way in a society where energy must be used and prepared in a new and smarter way.
In the students’ bags are Apple’s tablets, not any cheap chromebooks here, no. The municipality is sparsely populated and sparsely populated, but one can afford to get by with seven kindergartens.
The municipality’s slogan is appropriate enough. Photo: Unknown / Unknown
Reverse of the wealth
Then the question appears. Can one become too rich? There is no doubt that I have more money than people. In the schoolyards of the smallest schools, there should be more playmates. Suldal has more money than boat routes. Suldal has more money than safe roads.
Well-being cannot be bought with money, well-being comes with people. If you get too rich, don’t choose. One can become lazy and demanding, whiny and spoiled. A people who want subsidies for your and yours from the bulging Ulla Førre Business Fund.
And in Suldal, the politicians always have to remind themselves to be rich in a quiet way, because if one is too extravagant, the state can come and take more of the income.
Of course, Suldal is rich. But there are certainly more people who have been thanked for being our natural resources. Like, for example, Lyse and those who feast heavily on riches created in Røldal and Øvre Suldal. Values created by the water here trickle down to the municipalities in Rogaland and become welfare for thousands of people.
Suldal is a money machine for the country and for us who live here. Suldal became a power center after Ulla Førre. Now the municipality may be on the threshold of a new energy adventure – or nightmare – depending on the eye that sees. The point is, however, that Suldal’s prosperity in all forms gives the municipality a unique position to continue to be an energy centre, for even more green energy, in what is aptly called the green shift, built on the shoulders of hydropower.
Solar panels for “everyone” and the plans for the production of offshore wind turbines and hydrogen are examples of this. And maybe also something no one has thought of yet.
The future is also lit with a rich Suldal. But no one is enamored with a Suldal that is always poor in people. So far, neither wealth nor beautiful nature has been able to compensate for aging and thus also a lack of labour. Probably not the government’s either district notice, who want people to live quite far away.
Konfektöskja is open
Becoming the last port of call for old-age refugees who report moving to the Rolls-Royce nursing home in the year of the dust is not sustainable. You also need to attract able-bodied people who can build society further. What about using some of the wealth to increase the wages of important professions such as nurses, teachers and craftsmen? What about creating generous housing plots on unproductive land? How about creating more office communities for people with freelance jobs?
Because Suldal wants to share. But I want to share where I am. Konfektöskja is wide open for everyone, on our table. If you see the point in digging your way up to a mountain top, there is always an action to use your strength on.
We want to bring in people who can stand shoulder to shoulder with us in the fight to survive, people who can take care of the boat and the danger of the race. For the school and sports team. Because living in a small community means that you get to experience the good cogwheel feeling it gives to be passionate about something, together. There is wealth greater than anything.
And if the last man turns off the light in Suldal, then the light really goes out.
Published:
Published: July 9, 2023 10:06 p.m
2023-07-09 20:06:29
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