Sedona will be looking to join the Sister Cities organization in the next year.
Chuck Marr retired in Sedona many years ago from Omaha, Nebraska, where he helped spearhead the Sister Cities organization there as well. Since then, he has been actively involved in Verde Valley Caregivers, Rotary Club of Sedona, Christ Lutheran Church, Arizona Community Foundation in Sedona and serves on the Sedona International Film Festival Board.
“We want to be your volunteers that will do all this work. Now, that doesn’t mean that we won’t have a question or something that we call and ask,” Marr said to the city council at the Feb. 8 meeting. “We don’t want to make the [city] staff have to get involved and work on this. That’s why we’re here.”
The Sister Cities organization was established in 1956 by President Eisenhower for citizen diplomacy between similar towns all over the world. Currently, Arizona has 12 cities in the organization, including Flagstaff, Prescott and Scottsdale.
Marr, along with his team, contacted many local education, art, business and non-profit organizations to ask for their support in establishing Sedona as a Sister City. At the latest city council meeting, the organization presented to council members to ask for support, as well as a liaison from the council to help guide the initiative.
“Generally Sister City partnerships share similar demographics, town size and town budget or city size and city budget,” Chair member of the Sedona Ballet Winifred Muench said. “Partnerships arise from business connections, similar industries, diaspora communities, or shared history. For example, Portland, Oregon and Bologna, Italy partnership arose from shared industry in biotech.”
Some of the supportive local organizations include Sedona International Film Festival, the Sedona Ballet, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Yavapai College and the Sedona Oak-Creek School District.
“On behalf of me and some of the cultural organizations in town, a Sister City can have so many wonderful benefits culturally as we do exchanges with filmmakers, film festivals, independent theaters. All these wonderful things that we can establish a relationship and have them come to spend time in our city,” Sedona International Film Festival Executive Director Patrick Schweiss said. “So very selfishly, I’m very much behind this and many of our sister organizations are as well.”
All the council members expressed their support of joining the organization, with some concerns of the cost of travel for the potential liaison, issues with finding a comparable city and tying up city staff’s time.
“When we first started with this discussion, I had no idea the amount of high-powered down-to-earth people you have on your list of people here, [from] of all walks of our city. It’s so impressive,” Vice-Mayor Scott Jablow said. “I really appreciate being involved in this just to get this before the council. So, of course, I support it.”
After the presentation by Marr, Muench and Schweiss, council members also clarified that they would like to see this organization in more of a resident participation lense, rather than government focused that would take up time of city staff.
“I think they are a wealth of benefits that come from having a Sister City, just stay away from the government part of it,” Mayor Sandy Moriarty said.
Currently, there has been no Sister City determined to be paired with Sedona. But, Marr said that Ireland, the Czech Republic and Japan all have great potential options.
