We have two items up for uh discussion today.

Um both of them are briefings, but before we do that, um afterwards it's our intent to move into it's uh into closed session uh for discussion of uh pending litigation, I believe, correct?

No, property uh property, right?

Property uh discussion.

So um I'd entertain a motion to move in closed session following to the clerk if you call will Commissioner Tilgore President Commissioner Robbins, yes.

Commissioner Asassi, Commissioner Purdue.

Yes, Commissioner Belchak, yes, Mary Legrand.

Yes, and I think Commissioner Kilgore, you didn't mean to say you're abstaining, right?

You meant yeah, you meant yes, you said present early.

Like I'm here.

Yes, yes.

You're not doing a just in a mash on us.

No.

Um city manager, if you want to um take us away.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor and Commissioners for being here, and um glad everybody was able to safely uh make it.

Uh today we have very light cow agenda with two briefings.

I'll see up the first one, and the second one will be a follow-up from the discussion we had at last city commission meeting, but with uh so much emphasis on uh international affairs, we often get asked to um take policy actions on things that uh beyond our ability to influence or decide.

But one of the things we can do internationally is develop relationships directly, not directly with the state governments in other countries, but with other cities through cities programs, and we have been uh doing that subnational diplomacy.

Uh Luke Canfield has been uh the lead from our office in coordinating with our city partners.

You have uh improve the uh funding support for sister cities in last year's budget, and today we wanted to uh provide an update.

All right, thank you, City Manager.

Good morning, Commission.

Um we uh get so much done in Grand Rapids through partnerships, and uh Sister Cities really is a story of two important types of partnership between the city and others, of course, between us and the other cities, and you'll hear more about them in a moment.

And the city commission, your predecessors have authorized each of those relationships over time and then helped to sustain them as city managers said through funding support.

So there's the important uh partnership with the cities, but then we also have a model of partnering with a nonprofit organization, Grand Rapids Um Sister Cities International.

It's a multi-decade partnership.

It's been led by very capable people uh over time, and uh the three current uh members of the executive board of that organization are here today.

So uh Catherine Baker is the uh president, Emily Smith is the vice president, and Kelly Joe uh Peltier is the treasurer, and so we're happy to have them join us today.

And uh we we will have some exciting news that is part of the upcoming briefing.

And uh I'm gonna turn the presentation over to uh Catherine Baker to walk through the slides and then we'll answer any questions you may have to.

Good morning, my friends.

Thank you so much for having us.

We are thrilled to be here to represent Grandapid Sister Cities International.

We have a number of slides this morning.

We will be flying through them.

That's roughly 10 uh 10 slides with actual content, uh, but uh many additional slides for resources for anyone um tuning in as well.

So what we'll be we'll be covering today or this morning is just a little bit about Gronapid Sister City International, GRSCI, as we call it, mostly the why, why this is important, where and who, what's next for our strategic growth, and then how you can support.

And I'll uh also save time to answer any questions.

So just looking at our mission statement, you might be familiar.

We are a 501c3 nonprofit uh organization, all volunteer led, whose mission is to build and sustain these relationships between the city of Grand Rapids and all of our respective sister cities.

Why is this important, especially right now?

We are actually a local activation of a larger movement called Sister Cities International, which is based out of Washington DC.

It was established by President Dwight Eisenhower after World War II.

And even all of you are so important.

What this initiative really sought to do was to place peacekeeping and international diplomacy back into the hands of our community and of our people to remind us that you don't have to be an elected official or an appointed governor.

You can just be a regular person as some of us represent we're regular people.

Oops.

These relationships represent the diversity and uniqueness of our community.

We also represent a board of directors, and with our board of directors, these directors represent committees.

So even the names that you see, the volunteers, there stands behind them about 10 to 15 individuals from your districts or your sectors who also represent our communities and own these relationships.

We want to put some faces to these names and the programs that we're part of, so you can see that there's such richness in our community.

So what's next for Gron Rapids Sister Cities International?

We are expanding with your incredible support.

We've actually been able to make strong gains in our international partnerships with relationships we've already identified.

You know that we are already friendship cities with Nepro Ukraine.

This formed or established at a really unique time, right when the war broke out, and we received several asylums.

We also have a new relationship with our uh friendliest neighbor, Canada, and we have started the inquiry city there.

A little bit about these cities.

Uh, you probably know all these data points, but one of the really fun things about these relationships are predecessing mayor, Mayor Rosalind Bliss established this as a friendship city after uh years of support again with the war in Ukraine.