The Sister Cities Association is working in high gear to find Sedona’s twin city.
This past February, Sedona’s Sister Cities Association Chairman Chuck Marr presented the idea to the Sedona City Council to ask for their support in establishing the organization.
The association in Sedona is registered as a nonprofit, rather than being funded by the city.
“Our task in this next 10 months is to look at every possible city that is brought to us and do really a deep dive to better know everything about that city to really see whether it does match up,” Marr said.
Sister Cities International was started in 1956 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as a nonpartisan 501(c)(3). It began with the purpose to connect towns and cities in the U.S. with other towns and cities with similar interests across the world.
Last month, nine members were announced, including Chuck Marr, Don Groves, Carol Myers, Sara Crosby Hartman, Winifred Muench, Dottie Webster, Joy Sinnott, Judy Neiman and Sedona City Councilwoman Holli Ploog.
The board will be in charge of selecting the final sister city, as well as deciding the partnership’s directions for the organization and city.
Marr, along with some of the local community partners supporting the organization, asked for a liaison from the council who would be invested in helping form ties with a potential sister city at that council meeting. After discussion within the council, Ploog stepped up.
“What piqued my interest, in particular, was the potential to learn and benefit from the sharing of ideas and experiences with cities facing similar challenges to Sedona,” Ploog said. “While the primary benefits of a sister city relationship are generally thought of as cultural or business-related, imagine what we could learn from a city that has a tourism-based economy and has embraced sustainable tourism management.”
Currently, Marrs says that they are looking at many different cities across the world and so far they have heard about places in Columbia, Ireland, Mexico and South Korea. But with many more steps to go, no decision has been solidified.
“We’re toying with the idea of having a public meeting. We would then share the information about the top three or four cities and have them vote on them,” Marr said. “And then from that, take the recommendation from our board to the City Council. So there are many steps. But we aren’t even at a ‘speed dating’ of cities yet. We’re just starting to get names of a variety of cities.”
When Marr presented to the city council two months ago, he made it clear that Sedona would be looking for a town or city with similar interests such as sustainability, tourism, arts and culture. The organization will then plan meetings either via video conference or in-person through self-paid trips for members of the organization.
In the past, many sister cities across the country and world have also had exchange student programs and joint art festivals.
“Well, it’s important that we really try to match up, but also look at cities that we can learn from too. So the size of the city is important, but it’s really more about what the city is currently doing,” Marr said. “So if they’re a tourist location, are there things that they’re doing that we might learn from them and vice versa? That’s going to be very important. We might learn from what type of educational institutions they have. And it’s those types of exchanges that can be in any part of the city from education to arts to sports and youth.”
The board is asking for volunteers in Sedona to help find that specific city. These “Sister City sleuths” will be identifying many cities across the world that relate to Sedona. Marr hopes residents from all over in Sedona will sign up to be one of these sleuths on their website and suggest many different cities that the board could look into.
“I was the chair of the Omaha sister city group for four years and a member for over 10 with five sister cities, some going back as far as the mid-’50s,” Marr said. “The relationships that were built all over that time were just absolutely amazing. I think last time we had 10 folks that got married that had met each other through those types of exchanges.”
