Towards an open city

Rhymes from Riihimäki is a series of columns in which Riihimäki city personnel talk about current issues and their work.

I started just over a year ago in Riihimäki as a city manager. I knew more or less what to expect because I had about 20 years of municipal management positions behind me and 10 years of municipal management.

The start has still been surprising and required adaptation. The biggest influence has of course been Covid-19, which decisively changed municipal management. When I started in Riihimäki, society was closed. The meetings were held remotely, so both staff and trustees met online.

I was used to the fact that management takes place through people and by talking to people. However, there were no more stakeholder meetings. We couldn't even have lunch because the restaurants were closed. Plans for meetings of local residents, for example on jogging paths, were also forgotten.

Teams, other remote connections and e-mail make many situations easier, but you can't develop operations with them alone. Real development work requires presence and time for discussions, as well as informal discussions between official meetings.

Last autumn was a promise of the old. Evening and weekend events returned, the mayor was needed for numerous events. And yes, it was nice, meeting new people and learning a lot about the city and stakeholders!

As a city, we are now facing something new. The new council started last year and we are just about to approve the new city strategy. Service network decisions are reviewed and decided upon again.

In this situation, I hope for two things. First of all, that we would make decisions about both the strategy and the service network as uniformly as possible. In particular, we need to move forward in the service network issue so that a large part of the energy is not spent on it in the future. A good service network decision required compromises, and I believe that there is now the will to do so.

Secondly, I hope that together in the city we look positively to the future. We would talk positively about what we do and about each other. The decisions of the city organization must be trust-building, after which it is easy for everyone to commit to them. Our fine city deserves an atmosphere of cooperation and trust.

Transparency also increases trust. We encourage leading office holders and the entire organization to talk about their work and current affairs. We are also starting a new column series on city office holders, of which this is the first entry.

Don't hesitate to get in touch if something bothers you. By backgrounding things, we gather a common picture of the situation. We all want the city to develop and the citizens to be well. A very nice spring to you!

Jere Penttilä

The author is the mayor of Riihimäki