Young people in Örnsköldsvik are used to a lot of possibilities supported by the local authority, libraries, swimcentres, free school-lunches, money support and many other things. Now, in the saving times the teenagers are afraid of losing all these opportunities.

At first everybody thought that the hard saving-times that started in 1993 should come to an end in 1997 but so was not the case. During 1997-98 most of the local authority must save about eight million SEK. Two millions of that money shall be taken from the libraries. That's why twelve libraries in the thinly populated area have been told that their library may disappear instead of getting together with the school-library. That would mean the library would be closed for public in the evenings. It's suggested that our library shall just be a school-library and not be open for public as it is now. If this will happen it will effect the children in day-care and the old people that often come here. It will effect the schoolstudents too, because the number of books and media will become less when the library does not get as much in money-support as before.

No money no funny sort of sport

The politicians in Örnsköldsvik have decided to give young people the possibility of exercising and competing with his or her favourite sport. They have spent money to keep sport centres and swim centres open for everybody and in good shape. In school the children learn how to swim but the politicians have also made a special swim education for children up to the age of ten. Now the local authority needs to save money so they will raise the rents for the sport centres and at the same time take away the sport society's money support. All of these savings have resulted in that young people can't exercise their sport as much as earlier.

No lunch, thanks. I rather save my money

The Swedish schools have free lunches. We get food at school and we don't have to pay for it. For us it's very hard to imagine that we will have to pay for the lunch, but the school doesn't have enough money today so they must either fire some of the teachers, give us less school books or make us pay for the food.

What is the worst?

Before the local authority decide to carry through their proposals they send out an inquiry to the people. They always get protests against their decisions and the authority are supposed to listen to them. We have made an interview among the youth in Ö-vi k about what they think is worst of the savings that the local authority makes. Most of them answered: the worst thing is the savings on the money support for us teenagers. We used to have 750 SEK every month, now we only have 640 SEK.