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Sister City 2016/11/28CITY OF ANAHEIM SISTER CITY COMMISSION MINUTES November 28, 2016 COMMISSIONERS PRESENT: COMMISSIONERS ABSENT: STAFF PRESENT: GUESTS PRESENT: Anthony Al -Jamie, Paul Anderson, Pepe Avila, Lori Dinwiddie, Julia Erdkamp, Jackie Filbeck, Matthew Hicks, Debbie Julian, Mark Lopez, Brian O'Neal, Anna Piercy and Jeanne Tran Taline Cole, Yanni Guo and Jerry O'Keefe Greg Garcia, City Manager's Office Brent Dennis, Community Services Erin Ryan, City Manager's Office Maggie Solorio, City Manager's Office David Bracey, Anaheim University Melody Hirayama, Loara High School Agenda Posting A complete copy of the Anaheim Sister City Commission Agenda was posted on Monday, November 21, 2016 at 3:30 p.m. at Anaheim City Hall. Public Input: Chair Debbie Julian explained that members of the public are invited to address the Anaheim Sister City Commission and will be called upon under Agenda Item No. VL Public Comment. L CALL TO ORDER The meeting of the Anaheim Sister City Commission (ASCO) was called to order at 4:05 p.m. by Chair Debbie Julian on Monday, November 28, 2016 at the Anaheim City Manager's Office, City Hall, 200 S. Anaheim Blvd., 7th Floor, Anaheim, California. Greg Garcia introduced the City's Community Services Director Brent Dennis who has been with the City for 12 weeks. Greg advised that moving forward Brent and his department are going to take more of a role in the activities of the Sister City Commission as staff transitions out some leadership and Erin is going to be focusing more on communications in the City Manager's Office. Brent and Anaheim Sister City Commission November 28, 2016 Page 2 his staff will take more of a role in staffing the Commission and Greg will continue to participate in meetings and be a resource as well. Chair Debbie Julian introduced Melody Hirayama. Melody is a Japanese Teacher at Loara High School. Chair Julian noted Melody attended all of the festivities of the Sister City Mito visit during the summer and took the opportunity to thank her for everything that she did for the students during their visit. IL APPROVAL OF MINUTES MOTION: Commissioner Jackie Filbeck offered a Motion, seconded by Commissioner Brian O'Neal AND MOTION CARRIED (Vote: 6-0 (majority of the nine commissioners who were present at the 10/24 meeting); Absent: Taline Cole, Yanni Guo and Jerry O'Keefe; Abstained: Pepe Avila, Julia Erdkamp, Debbie Julian, Mark Lopez, Anna Piercy and Jeanne Tran) that the Anaheim Sister City Commission does hereby approve the minutes from the ASCC meeting held on October 24, 2016 as presented. III. APPROVAL OF TREASURER'S REPORTS Treasurer Jeanne Tran noted the Treasurer's Report dated November 15 shows a balance of $9,416.07. The report has been updated and shows the adjustments that took place during October. Erin Ryan asked about the 3/15/2017 Recognition Luncheon charge on the report and indicated it may have been charged to this account in error. Staff is going to check on that and will report back in January. MOTION: Commissioner Jackie Filbeck offered a Motion, seconded by Commissioner Mark Lopez AND MOTION CARRIED (Vote: 12-0; Absent: Taline Cole, Yanni Guo and Jerry O'Keefe) that the Anaheim Sister City Commission does hereby approve the Treasurer's Report dated November 15, 2016. IV. AD HOC SUBCOMMITTEE REVIEW & REPORTS a. Cultural/Government Exchanize Subcommittee Commissioner Jeanne Tran reported the subcommittee finalized the application for the 2017 Outbound Student Exchange. She will be emailing it out along with a flyer to the Commission that day. The subcommittee is working on transitioning the form to an online format. The deadline to turn in an application is Jan. 13. After some discussion, the Commission Anaheim Sister City Commission November 28, 2016 Page 3 extended the deadline to turn in the application to 5:00 p.m. on Jan. 20 to give students enough time to prepare and get recommendation letters from their teachers after the winter break. The meet and greet is scheduled for Jan. 25 and the interviews for Feb. 1. The location of the interviews is to be determined and will be confirmed before the date of the interviews. Erin is going to check on the availability on some of the rooms at the Anaheim Downtown Community Center from 5:00 to 7:30 p.m. Discussion took place about adding a statement on the outbound student application that says the Commission strongly encourages outbound students to host a Japanese student. Commissioner Jackie Filbeck would like to have the 2016 Inbound Student Exchange video posted on the Sister City website and also streamed on the local government channel to get more interest from the community. Ideas were discussed about making a presentation and handing out host family applications to students and their parents at the meet and greet reception. Instead of adding a statement on the application, the Commission decided to re -enforce and continue to spread the idea of hosting at the meet and greet and work with the Japanese classes to get some interest there. b. Marketing/Fundraising Subcommittee None. c. Economic Development Subcommittee None. V. SISTER SCHOOLS DISCUSSION Vice Chair Al -Jamie reported he spoke with Mito Mayor Yasushi Takahashi about sister schools and he loved the idea. However, Mito's elementary schools and junior high schools are governed by the city, but their high schools are prefectural public schools, which means the city has little to no involvement in those schools. Mayor Takahashi said it's fine for an Anaheim high school class to partner with one of their junior high school classes, but that they couldn't involve Mito high schools. Vice Chair added he is trying to convince Ms. Melody Hirayama who teaches Japanese at Loara High School to have a Sister Class. Ms. Hirayama stated her students have already expressed interest. Anaheim Sister City Commission November 28, 2016 Page 4 Commissioner Jackie Filbeck asked if the Commission was also interested in getting a sister class at the 6th grade level. Vice Chair Al -Jamie responded he'd like it to be with every school. Jackie is going to move forward to try to establish a sister class with the elementary level and will present the idea to Superintendent Linda Wagner. VI. PUBLIC COMMENT David Bracey reported that Sister Cities International, SoCal Chapter is going to hold a raffle in January to give away a free plane ticket to Japan, which might be timely for students and chaperones going to Mito in the summer. The drawing will be on Jan. 16 and the airline ticket is from Japan Airlines. It is a round trip to Tokyo and travel needs to be completed by July 31. The raffle ticket is $10 and the second prize is four tickets to the US Sumo Open in Long Beach and third prize is four quarterly issues to Tokyo Journal Magazine. If anyone is interested in purchasing a ticket they can see him. Greg Garcia noted that staff continues to work with Disney about either hosting a Pudong delegation in Anaheim in March and or taking a delegation from Anaheim to Pudong in the early summer. Greg believes Anaheim can easily arrange for hosting them in March. They already got a jump start on it, since they had initially planned it for October. Greg wanted to let the Commission know that this is being worked on. Staff can certainly agendize it on a future agenda to talk about it further. Commissioner Jeanne Tran suggested putting together a subcommittee to discuss potential options in terms of funding sources and planning it all out. Greg agreed that would be a good idea, but staff first needs to confirm that it's happening for sure. By January or February, staff will have a better idea and then possibly move to put a subcommittee together. VII. COMMISSIONER COMMENTS Commissioner Pepe Avila reported that on Wednesday, Nov. 30, Visit California would be hosting experts in Anaheim to talk about Global Ready China. Global Ready is an educational platform aimed to prepare California's tourism industry to better serve the global traveler. Since Pudong is one of Anaheim's Sister Cities, if the Commission is interested in attending, the meeting will take place at the Double Tree Suites in Anaheim from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Commissioner Lori Dinwiddie asked to have the appointment of the Sister Commission Chair agendized on the next agenda. She recalls that the Vice Chair and Treasurer were appointed recently, but the Chair was not. Anaheim Sister City Commission November 28, 2016 Page 5 VIII. ADJOURNMENT There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 5:05 p.m. to Monday, January 23, 2017 at 4:00 p.m. at the Anaheim City Hall, 7th Floor, City Manager's Office Large Conference Room.