Restore Miami Beach tie to Sister Cities with proper funds

Miami Beach is taking a necessary step in working to bring its global Sister Cities program back under the city’s umbrella after handing it off to the local chamber of commerce four years ago.

Regardless of how well the Miami Beach Chamber has handled the program, foreign dignitaries from communities of any size expect to be dealing with government leaders in any Sister City, not just heads of the business community.

Sister Cities partners from abroad, noted Miami Beach Commissioner Tanya Bhatt a meeting this month, expect “our elected officials” to give “the due respect that is treated everywhere else in the world. I think we are devaluing what it means and missing a huge opportunity for us.”

She’s right, because it is a huge opportunity that for four years has been largely wasted by the city.

The national program itself dates to its founding in 1956 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to create a network of thousands of citizen diplomats and volunteers to run city programs that promote peace and strengthen local communities. Several thousand US cities now participate, Exchanges are more than governmental, ranging from civic to the arts and culture to education to global knowledge, as well, of course, as business. Missions between nations are expected.

Shortly after the Sister Cities program began, Miami Beach got into the game in 1958, establishing links with the Japanese seaside city of Fujisawa. Then came Almonte in Spain, Basel in Switzerland, Brampton in Canada, Fortaleza and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Ica in Peru, Krumlov in the Czech Republic, Nahariya in Israel, Santa Maria in Colombia, and Cascais in Portugal. But at the time the chamber took over, Fujisawa was the only active link.

The handover at the time seemed largely an economic decision. The city had had a fulltime staff member handling the program and the whole thing was handed to the chamber with only a $20,000 city subsidy, creating a city budget saving. 

US Sister City partners pay for foreign delegates’ hotels, meals and transportation – everything but airfare, which the delegates pay themselves. How many missions of any size from abroad each year could be funded with $20,000? It’s little wonder that Sister Cities activity slowed.

As Miami Beach moves forward to a January committee meeting on taking over the Sister Cities program from the chamber and then a Feb. 21 public hearing, it needs to come to grips with how to handle the program correctly. The $20,000 figure was never adequate, and costs rise yearly. A proper budget would be some multiple of $20,000.

The city has given the Sister Cities program much higher visibility in the past. In 2012 the city dedicated a 10-foot-tall pole outside its city hall that identified its Sister Cities partners and listed the distance between each and Miami Beach in miles. Four global consuls general attended the ceremony. Shortly before that, then-mayor Matti Bower had led a city delegation to Ica, Peru.

It’s important for Miami Beach – in fact, for any Miami-Dade community – to keep up and highlight its ties abroad. None of that is effortless or free.

Miami Beach needs to weigh carefully the impact on the community of its global ties – after all, Miami Beach is a global name. What’s one of its biggest attractions around the world? Art Basel, from a Sister City. How much is that link worth to the city? Millions. 

Such ties deserve carefully nurturing, not benevolent neglect.