City Council steps on the brakes with the Guggenheim project
Many Helsinki City Council members have turned against the tight schedule for making a decision on a proposed Guggenheim museum. The letter of intent for the museum will be brought to the Helsinki City Board for approval on January 30. However, the different political parties’ council groups have still not been able to study the final contents of the document.
The Social Democratic Party council members are especially critical of the timeframe. According to the group’s chair, Jorma Bergholm, they will be demanding at least two months for the circulation of the proposal for comments before making any decisions on the museum.
Bergholm says the majority of SDP councillors agree that the decision-making schedule is unreasonably tight, as the matter under consideration is culturally and economically multifaceted, and because such big money is involved.
Both City Council and City Board members need to have enough time to get well acquainted with all documents and to carefully consider their positions, Bergholm argues.
“The biggest problem is that we’ve only received a draft of Mayor Jussi Pajunen’s proposal without any attachments. For example, we are missing a Finnish translation of the 186-page-long feasibility study, which includes a lot of jargon. It is wrong to assume that people have such good command of the English language,” Bergholm complains.
Greens also call for more time
Many Green League councillors are calling for a speedier one-month circulation of the proposal for comment, says Ville Ylikahri, chair of the Council’s Greens.
“We eagerly await next week’s final proposal including the letter of intent as well as the whole translated feasibility study,” Ylikahri comments.
Tatu Rauhamäki, chair of the National Coalition group in the City Council, does not reject giving more time to make the decision. However, he points out that everyone has known about the Guggenheim project for a year, and that there has been plenty of time to consider one’s basic orientation towards the museum.
Rauhamäki says that now is the time to weigh up costs as well as sanctions that would follow from a subsequent City Council giving up on the museum after the letter of intent was signed.
According to the current timeframe, the various City Council groups need to state their position on the new Guggenheim museum before February 6, which is the deadline for a Helsinki City Board decision on the matter.
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