Economics

Östersund Municipality is the largest employer in the county — a gigantic organisation taking care of all that, its citizens, for practical, ideological and conventional reasons have chosen to be jointly responsible for.

All municipal employees share a mutual target, which is to provide the Municipality´s citizens with the best possible service for the revenue they pay in the form of taxes and fees. Our elected representatives — local politicians — are responsible for managing and distributing this revenue.

The decision—makers

The Municipal Council stipulates the amount to be paid in council tax and how the revenue is divided between The Municipal Executive Council and the various committees. Each committee is then responsible for steering the use of the money in the best possible way to achieve the operational targets set.

Municipal Revenue

By paying a council tax the Municipality´s citizens make a mutual contribution to a substantial part of municipal activities. Council tax is roughly two thirds (65%) of the total revenue. Twenty five percent of the Municipality´s revenue comes from various specific fees e.g. child day care fees and refuse/waste collection fees etc.

A central government grant covers roughly 10% of the Municipality´s revenue. For every 100 SEK earned citizens pay 22.37 SEK in council tax. Municipal tax revenue is calculated at 2 135 million SEK for the fiscal year 2007, 2 235 million SEK for 2008 and 2 333 million SEK for 2009.

Municipal Expenditures

The Municipality has 5 000 employees and a budget of roughly 3 billion SEK for 2007, of which 2.5 billion SEK is tax revenue. The various committees have been allocated a total of 2.53 billion for 2007 (please see table). Three quarters of these resources finance services for the elderly and disabled, schools and pre-schools.

Due to the fact that the elderly population is increasing in numbers more money must be allocated to elderly care. More money must also be invested in upper-secondary school education now that children from the baby boom of the eighties and early nineties have reached the age for upper-secondary school. The culmination of this is calculated to occur in 2008.

The number of comprehensive school pupils is estimated to drop by 1000 by 2010/2011. As a consequence, comprehensive school education will be required to manage with less money.

As a result of the assumption that there will be a rising birthrate and various reforms including among others a maximum fee for child day care, there will be an increasing need for child daycare.