– The meeting was not good – VG

At a meeting of the presidency on Tuesday afternoon, Tromsø Mayor Gunnar Wilhelmsen (Labor Party) will be questioned about the Arctic Center case.

Arctic Center is a new ski resort and country town, where the mayor owns 29.7 percent of the shares, while his brother Knut Wilhelmsen owns 37.8 percent.

Therefore, the mayor has been incompetent in the political treatment of the case.

On May 12, Wilhelmsen was in a meeting with the municipal leadership group of the Labor Party. There he expressed his discontent that his fellow party members had voted against the project, and highlighted how much money he had invested himself, sources told the Tromsø daily on Friday.

At Tuesday’s presidential meeting, the mayor denies violating fairness rules.

– I am incompetent in the political treatment of the case. What I am not incompetent in is at work that in the Labor Party, as in other parties, we are obliged to do after difficult cases. Namely, ventilate, advance and improve ourselves, says Wilhelmsen at the presidency meeting.

An incompetent person will not participate in the prosecution or decision of a case.

Difficult encounter

The mayor himself tells iTromsø that the tone during the dishwashing meeting was “violent and confrontational.”

– When the case was finished, I had a clear idea that we in the Labor Party had not done a good job and that our support could be affected, Wilhelmsen told the presidency on Tuesday.

Furthermore, Wilhelmsen says he has a great commitment to the case.

He apologizes for his behavior during the meeting.

– That meeting was not good. The aforementioned commitment combined with the disappointment of the result made me go very far in my characteristics of both the process and the result. It shouldn’t have happened and I’ve regretted it, he says.

Criticism from conservatives

Conservative group leader Erlend Svardal Bøe questions the mayor’s understanding of the role.

– Then the Labor Party should clarify whether it is the members of the Labor Party’s municipal steering group who would have had a different outcome in the case if the mayor had not participated in the discussions at the meeting, says Svardal Bøe.

– Then I would like to ask the mayor what he thinks about his own role and that again and again they ask themselves about the impartiality of the mayor in various cases, ask more.

Wilhelmsen, for his part, says he assesses fairness thoroughly, also with the help of the municipal administration.

Bendik Hugstmyr Woie de Rødt is not satisfied with the mayor’s explanation.

– I believe that the municipal council should make a legal assessment of the mayor’s choice to attend a meeting with the group on the subject, and that the administration should also comment on what happened, he tells VG.

Refuse knowledge of the complaint

When the informal dishwashing meeting was held in the party group on May 12, the mayor’s brother worked to appeal the refusal. Therefore, the case was not finally resolved and processed by the municipality.

The mayor says he only heard that the case could come up again after the internal dishwashing meeting in the Labor Party.

– Control of legality was a strange word for me. The first time I realized the case could crop up again was in an email from management on May 18, he says.

Controversial rural town

The day before the case was decided in the municipal council, the mayor’s brother came out with an ointment of force against the newspaper’s politicians. He told iTromsø that the brothers had invested NOK 19 million in the project.

The municipal council approved the alpine station. When the rural town was put up for consideration on April 29, the Labor Party group decided to vote against it. The plans for the rural city, with about 350 cabins, were considered too extensive.

Their votes secured a majority against the cabin plans, which were thus rejected.

The group asked the mayor for a meeting to discuss the matter. Just two weeks later, on May 12, the informal meeting took place.

Enabling fight

The city’s mayor has also been in a dispute recently over Hurtigruten connections.

He went to a private meeting with the director of Hurtigruten during the corona eruption on one of the company’s cruise ships. Wilhelmsen is married to Hurtigruten’s director of public relations and rents premises from the company himself.

In retrospect, he regretted going to this meeting alone, according to iTromsø.

The same group writes a new configuration

As the complaint arrived, the rural town will come to a new consideration in the town hall at the end of September.

The Tromsø Labor Party will resolve this so that the municipal council group, which voted against the rural town in the previous vote, will now present its assessment of the matter in a recommendation to the party’s supervisory council.

It will be the 88 members of the vigilance council who, therefore, decide how the party will position itself for the rural city, when the matter arises again in the municipal council.