Speaker 3: Today, though, I'm in front of you as president of the Alameda Sister City Association, and I'm actually here with several members of the community, as well as a founding member and some of the students from Notre Dame and into now high schools, as well as members from the Chinese-American community and the Filipino American community also. It just goes to show how much support we have behind our efforts.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, and this is day.
Speaker 3: Is. This is forward planning. So as you know, our association is a member of Sister City International. All right. Oh, thank.
Speaker 4: You.
Speaker 3: And what we do is we facilitate the. We facilitate and organize sister city activities for the city of Alameda. We have actually been a nonprofit organization for the last five years as well, so it helps for our mission. And our mission statement is as such. It is our goal to create relationships based on cultural, educational, economic and informational exchanges that foster lifelong relationships, to provide prosperity and peace through person to person diplomacy. Moving forward as president, I envision adding several community.
Speaker 0: Chairs.
Speaker 3: To head their own community. Scuse me. Had their own committee. As local residents who will identify cities across the globe to establish new sister city relationships. I would also like to take this opportunity to invite each and every council member to join our association and think about a sister city in a country not so far away that you'd like to foster a relationship with. These are our current sister cities. So Jan Ying Sister City, who Alex Chen is actually the committee chair for. That is a very active sister city. We also get invited to their conferences every year where a small delegation from here gets hosted along with many others from around the country. Unfortunately, a reader Japan and a lending girl from Sweden are not active. We are in communication with the Consul General of Japan to move forward with either a visa or identify another city in Japan. The Jimmy Getty. Program is going to be headed up by Cynthia Bonta, and you will hear from her in just a few moments . This is exactly where Janning is. And the reason why I'm showing that is because. This next one. There's a slide of how our delegation to China was greeted and how excited this sister city relationship was for the Chinese people as well as the people of Alameda. So we have a picture of our delegates presenting a gift to the Jennings city officials. This one is Mayor Johnson shaking hands with the mayor of Jenin city.
Speaker 0: That is in that city.
Speaker 3: Excuse me.
Speaker 0: This took place in. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And with that, I would like to introduce Cynthia Barton, who is going to give you a little bit more information about what is going on with Dumaguete and where we're going to go next. Thank you.
Speaker 4: I'm really very proud to be the US aska Alameda Sister City Association chairperson where the Alameda Dumaguete is sister city to be. We hope that's going to happen in June. This is a slide show of a slide of the map and you can tell that the magenta is in the eye. In the province of Negros Oriental, which is in the. Island of Negroes. So Negroes has Oriental and Occidental. Dumaguete Magenta is located at the southern eastern tip of Negros Island with a population of 104,167. 20,000 of that are students and they consider is the source of their economic growth. Dumaguete there. The name was coined from the Vizzion word nugget, which means to snatch. So Daggett is the root word, dumaguete is the action word, and it became dumaguete there as the name too applied to the city to in order to show that the city does have the power to attract and keep her visitors. That's why it snatched me. And hopefully they will snatch you too, so that Dumaguete can be a really attractive sister city for Alameda. Dumaguete is the Capital Principal Seaport and largest city in the Philippine province of Negros Oriental, known as the City of Gentle People. It was named one of the most ideal places in the world to visit, considering climate, cost of living, crime rate, existing expatriate community and healthcare. Now beach resorts, world class dove sites and dolphin and whale watching are a few of the tourist attractions. So do I. Move this? Oh. Okay. This is downtown Dumaguete there and you will see that there is some Spanish history. That tower over there is really the symbol of the city. Actually, that was the picture on the gift that Mayor Sagar Barea presented to the city of Alameda when I got back last June, 2013. Around September. And you will see that there is a church there. The Philippines is 85% Roman Catholic, and almost all cities have a cathedral of some kind. And those little object transportation vehicles are called tricycles. The very creative Filipinos transformed their bikes into little tricycles so that they can have a livelihood of transporting people from one place to another. But do we get the likes to be promoted as an investment destination for commerce to resume and business process outsourcing? Presently there are centers for tele tech SBI Eventers and qualified one. I don't know if you know what those tech companies are, but they're in dumaguete there. It's known to be the largest call center in the in the world or Asia. So that's. When I visited and delivered personally a letter from the Alameda City mayor at that time, Marie Gilmore, we brought a gift to symbolize our good faith and goodwill, and I was presenting it to Manuel Tavis to Gabriela, the Mayor of Dumaguete that. So that was two years ago. So we are now preparing to host a delegation. From our Philippines sister city to be them to get there in June, possibly from the fourth to the eighth in hours. It right here. The main purpose of the diplomatic visit is to formalize the sister city relationship between the two cities, with the two mayors signing a memorandum of understanding. Sister cities create relationships based on cultural, educational information and trade exchanges, creating lifelong friendships that provide prosperity and peace through person to person citizen diplomacy. The next slide. Tells us what we've done. Okay. There was an interest expressed by both mayors and the mayors exchanged greetings, which was made public during the celebration of Philippine National Day event in 2014, last year in June. And right now, we're having ongoing communications between our contacts in Dumaguete and us to plan for the program so that that program might somehow be reflected in the memorandum memorandum of understanding. So to to come. Is a city of Alameda resolution. We're hopeful that that will come about because you do have to approve the idea of alameda and dumaguete becoming sister cities. And that resolution will also be sent to the monks at their. And now. We have been thinking very hard about what our approach would be in this. Alameda, Dumaguete is sister city partnership and the whole board of directors has been pretty strong and unanimous in their wish that the exchange will be mainly educational and that this educational exchange occur in different levels with the youth level a very important element and with the potential of having even faculty exchanges between Silliman University, which is in Dumaguete this city. This is an American founded university that is recognized in the United States. It up its structure is adopts a lot of the American style education. So it's now considered pretty international because they have exchange students all over the globe in different continents. So we want that to happen, especially for our young people here, so that there can be this mutual exchange for mutual understanding and peace. Be starting with the young people. So we have a very ambitious itinerary for the four days. We will keep you updated on that because we're still firming them up and. We also have already initiated conversations between the Peralta Community College's International Studies Office and Silliman University president. He will be coming with his delegation, and we will have an opportunity to actually talk to him about the different options that he would like to offer us as far as educational exchange. So I think we really ought to pride ourselves in the diversity of our city. To think that our first sister city is between China, brought about by our Chinese-American community and our second active sister city will be between the Filipino-American community here and, of course, the broader community of Alameda and the Philippines. These two are the largest immigrant immigrant communities here in Dumaguete. And no wonder. So it would be really exciting to provide the international character of our relationships right here in in in Alameda. I really foresee that in the future, if we continue to have sister cities with different countries, that we can actually have an international youth conference here where they can exchange ideas about what issues they face as young people and maybe even as young people address international issues. So that's our presentation. And we want to close by inviting. All to our first fundraiser at Dragon Rouge, May four. This is an opportunity to get updates and also to help defray the hosting expenses, which is quite overwhelming. But we can do it. Thank you very much. I guess we can welcome questions. I don't know a few.
Speaker 0: Thank you. The member comments or questions? Member, Desai.
Speaker 5: I'll just offer a comment. Thank you very much to Ms.. Bonta and also to Karen Fong for the presentation tonight and the hard work that you've done putting this together over the many months. I think also a hearty thank you should go out to former council member Stuart Santa, who was very instrumental in putting this together. This sounds like very exciting. I look forward to June.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 0: Remember, Audie.
Speaker 7: Also want to say thank you for all the hard work. You know, it's it's about time that we do have a sister city relationship with with a city in the Philippines. The state of California, you know, 1.5 million people that live in California are Filipino Americans. It's the largest API group in the state of California. And, you know, we've been blessed to have three Filipino American Council members, Councilmember de Saag, Councilmember Chen. Councilmember Bonta, who's now the first Filipino elected ever in the history of the state of California to the state assembly. So I think this is a real good thing to commemorate the heritage of our Filipino Americans and Alameda. And I also want to thank Cynthia and our vice mayor, who is in charge of this program for a very long time, and also our former council member, Stuart Chen, for all of his hard work on this.
Speaker 0: I remember Commons.
Speaker 6: Well, we have had sister city relations for a long time because when I saw letting go Sweden on the on the list when I was a student at Edison School a long time ago, we all had pen pals and letting go. So I guess that's kind of fallen by the wayside, but it's good to refresh with some current choices. So thank you all for your hard work and really nice to see you. Young people, the students in the audience. I know you got your homework done before you came, so thank you for coming to.
Speaker 2: I just I just want to say thank you for, for that presentation and thanks to the council for, uh, in most attention and lending work.
Speaker 0: And I also want to join in thanking all of you that are here this evening on this item. And I have a question. You had mentioned, Ms.. Fong, in regards to Japan that you're trying to get a substitute city in Japan. And I'm curious, in regards to Sweden, if there's efforts to find another community within Sweden, since it appears that we no longer have an active relationship.
Speaker 3: I actually have a relationship with the consul general of Japan and for another, a community involvement that I am with. But we have not made any contact with Sweden yet as of now.
Speaker 0: So if there's anyone that in our community that's interested in assisting with, you.
Speaker 3: Know, yes, quite frankly, we're a small organization and we're just now getting our feet going. So it's definitely in the works. We do. We definitely do want to establish reestablished communication with Sweden. I am back up here at the microphone and I really want it to just open it up to everybody in the chambers. Right now. If anybody is interested in joining Almeida's Sister City Association, please let us know. And we have some brochures out on the table out front and you know, you can join a committee or you can head a committee on your own if you'd like to. So we'd like to entertain that.
Speaker 6: And just just for the record, I was just reminiscing. It was a lot of years ago when I was at Edison School. And I think I'm given the way our population has shifted in the current demographics, I think it's perfectly appropriate to have the sister city relationships that we have and that, you know, it takes energy, a lot of energy to put these committees together. So I would really support just starting with what you're doing and and growing from there.
Speaker 3: Well, it really takes effort to put the committees together. It actually takes even more effort to keep them going. We don't want to we don't want, you know, situations like a Rita and then to go away, I mean, to happen again. It's just that's just not what we're about. Does it make sense to establish these relationships and then, oops, let them die? It's kind of like friendships, you know, we want to you want to foster those relationships and keep them going forever and ever time.
Speaker 0: Yeah, thank you. Q Item agenda item four.
Speaker 1: We do have a speaker under oral communication.
Speaker 0: Jim Hager.
Speaker 2: Good evening, Mayor, fellow council members. My name is Jim Hager. I live on Randall Road across the lagoon from the veer off campus. And I'm here to try and educate people. On the use loss. Nuisance lighting. I'm going to pass around two sets of pictures. The top picture here. Was taken at the other end of the lagoon. Where there was no nuisance lighting. The picture showing the houses very clearly was taken with a pocket digital and not a cheap one. But a good one. But not a great one. Taken. Why the light coming from the chiefs over lighting. The second picture. The bottom one was taken from my living room, the top one from my bed. No. I think we need a little more planning in our.
Presentation on the Alameda Sister City Association Dumaguete, Philippines Sister City Plan.  (City Manager 2210)