Travis County Commissioners Court
Tuesday, February 1, 2011,
Item 20
Item number 20, consider and take appropriate action on the following: request to join local residents and extend an invitation to various chinese officials to visit Travis County.
we have representatives I met with.
if you all will come forth.
is everybody here?
>> yes.
>> okay.
why don't you, if you would give us your names, let me try to lay out this.
I have sent out a little email backup so far, yes, if you would just have a seat there, make your selves at home.
thanks for joiningous this very cold day.
if you would give us your names.
>> my name is saneta marty.
>> george chen.
>> ti sheriff's deputy.
>> happy year of the golden rabbit.
>> the -- this group and others approached me a few weeks ago and basically asked me to invite a delegation of officials from dengfang, china to visit Travis County and my first thought was instead of the county judge having all the fun, why not get the Travis County Commissioners court to extend the invitation.
since that I知 I thought about this and really think that it's an excellent idea for us to promote cultural exchange and maybe business development.
the city of Austin has a couple sister city relationships.
in my view, it would be the county, city of Austin, various chambers, various businesses and residents and these individuals and the chinese association trying to help put this together.
the visitors would basically foot their own expenses, and what we would be expected to do is sort of help with the schedule, accommodate their visit.
typically there is a reception of some sort and we would basically depend on some of our private businesses and individuals to foot the bill for that.
Travis County would not.
but we would be like the host.
and I think we ought to invite others to co-host with us.
the chamber doing this routinely.
I have not contacted the chamber yet but I知 not reluctant to do so.
I think I need to say if the Commissioners court has taken a position and if I知 going there as county judge, then I need to say that also.
when I致e looked at it, the only thing that sort of stands out as being a need that may require a little bit of work to cover is the transportation.
and I did not know that when the city of Austin has visitors, it provides a van for those visitors.
and we're talking about six people so far.
and in the backup I indicated what their titles are.
in china, the decision to visit is not quite like it is here in united states.
there there's the official invitation and that invitation works its way up through various channels and at some point there's a signoff from the powers that be there.
am I covering everything?
>> yes, you are doing an excellent job.
>> and what I tried to do in the backup too, by the way, mr. Shing provided a book regard ing this area I have and I simply looked through there and got one of the pictures of dengfang and it is a beautiful and huge city, county, with a population -- is it 5 or 7 million?
>> 700,000.
>> 700,000?
>> yes.
>> 700,000.
>> that's a picture of it.
a whole lot more greenery than I expected to see.
kind of reminds me of Austin-Travis County.
>> it does.
>> that's why we're here.
when I chatted with them the idea of a sort of sister county fascinated me.
and my request is that we simply explore that.
but the invitation to visit if we're going to do that needs to be issued, I guess, fairly soon so that the necessary work up the channels in china can take place.
and maybe we end up with a sister county relationship, maybe not, that will require mutual agreement.
but we think we have agreement to visit now, right?
and if we after their visit decide that we want to visit there, then that, of course, is an option.
the city of Austin has representatives that visit various cities and countries periodly and I知 assuming that proves to be beneficial.
there is the ultimate goal of -- but to the extent government can promote that, then it would seem to me to make sense.
right?
>> yes.
>> what would you all add?
>> we're hoping that you can support us in this, your honor, and the delegates are willing to pocket all the expenses.
I believe the only thing we are looking at at the moment is in the area of transportation.
we're very excited about this and we're hoping that eventually we will visit china as well and we can certainly develop culture, education and business developments between Austin and hunan province.
so we're very excited bit and we have a tremendous amount of support from the communities here in Austin, chinese communities other asian communities and businesses in Austin that truly are supporting us in this project.
>> additionally, the -- I知 not sure you know that movie star.
kung fu.
>> years ago.
>> the culture and the business, I think is benefit for both side.
>> he's talking about the movie star jet chin.
and he came from sheldon temple.
>> so the sheldon temple is there?
>> that's the most famous temple in china.
in addition, their economy are prosperous and Travis County covers so many cities, in this connection I think if we in the future can have some trade and some investment to come here and that would be good for all the citizens in Travis County too.
>> we're looking at -- well, in fact it's going to appear on next week's agenda, economic development for this general area, and basically it's looking at employment and it's going to be to agenda.
we're going to talk maybe a little about it next week.
it could be more timely than what you are saying.
and this is basically for looking at low-income persons, looking at unemployment-type situations in the area, in this general area because we do have significant unemployment in some areas.
and it appears to me that the economic development things that you are suggesting, transportation and other things like that, we're looking basically at looking at manufacturing, for an example, bringing some type of manufacturing jobs here where persons can get the necessary skill to actually do the work.
and, of course, we are venturing into that point now and anything that I think you can lend alone or whatever as far as providing us with maybe some of the attributes that we would need in trying to achieve this goal, then, of course, we welcome that.
and I think we do need a marriage between global investment-type situations but bringing them here to a local level.
so I think this is very timely, judge, with all the other things that are going on, I just think it will go in the best interest of what we're trying to do for the Travis County residents, but however, also extend maybe opportunities to bring certain things here that they probably are dealing with.
Commissioner Eckhardt and I both are looking very strongly at this and this is going to come before the court in the near future.
it's something that I think we can work together on as we look at global investment, global type of connectivity throughout the world because it is global, but yet it affects us locally if we are doing anything about it as far as some of the folks that really haven't had the employment opportunities that they deserve here in Travis County.
so I知 looking forward to working with you and anybody else to achieve this goal.
and you mentioned too that if you come visit here, there may be an opportunity for court members to go to your city.
and I guess have you picked out a court member yet that you would like to come or we have to toss the coin?
how do we deal with that?
>> pay our often way and we all get to go.
>> we will be entertaining a trip midyear or so to china, and at the moment whoever designated individuals that will be visiting china has not been decided upon.
but I知 sure we would like an individual from the courthouse representings us on this trip.
>> judge, should we designate deece to work with the delegation to work out issues with regard to transportation and what other -- what other extensions of hospitality that we could provide?
>> well, I was going to take the lead myself and try to work with the residents.
I think that some visits to city of Austin, various chambers and I would include all of them that are interested.
but to the extent deece is available, and he will be real business any the legislative session, soon.
we hope the visit will occur when?
>> April.
>> April?
>> kind of on the fast track.
but these representatives have known our interest in their visit or your interest in their visiting already, right?
and they are waiting on the invitation.
I just thought resident invitation coming from me, if it came from the court it would be better, but I am -- I would be willing to accept whatever help we can get, and I知 sure they will too, but there will be private individuals, deece, others at the county.
there are tracks that need to be run, different pieces for us to do this.
I notice here visit at university of Texas, contacts need to be made to make that happen.
that one reception, you know, at a nice location, probably do a little fundraising from private sources to make that happen.
there are individuals too, and businesses that may be positively impacted, we would want to provide that opportunity.
but -- so my hope today is that we will agree to formally invite the six officials that are listed here, and I understand that that list may change.
it may be a little less than six, may be a little more, right?
>> yes.
>> but the number will be fairly small and in that range.
>> yes.
>> and so my guess on b would be that we explore the feasibility of establishing a sister county relationship.
that will take a lot more time than issuing the invitation.
what I would do is work with court members and y'all and put the invitation in final shape by next Tuesday, and we would have it come on something that looks a little more official that is signed by the five of us if we approve this.
how is that?
now, our county judge is a powerful individual, but our court is even more powerful.
is my thinking.
>> well, I think it's a good idea, judge, and also to not start from scratch, how does the city of Austin deal with trying to arrange everything for a sister city.
and I think they have good experience there and so maybe we can kind of take it -- take off from there.
>> so with that, I move that we --
>> second.
>> -- put the invitation in final shape for approval by the court next Tuesday.
and that we send that invitation immediately after next Tuesday to the official that is listed in this letter and it will go to the city mayor of dengfang, and we have his address here, right?
>> yes.
>> and I was told that we could change this letter as we see fit except there are two or three things that must be as set forth here, like the names of the individuals, their date of births and their official titles.
that's what we want to see basically.
we will find out exactly what that is, embellish it, make it Travis County specific that you all see that final product.
motion would be to explore a sister county relationship and in getting this done we would work with the city of Austin, chamber of commerce that's already been working on this, interested residents including especially these three and make this happen.
>> sure.
>> all right?
is there a second?
>> yeah, I致e second judge.
>> any more discussion, comments?
>> thank you for bringing us the opportunity.
>> thank you.
>> thanks a lot.
>> thank he very much and have a wonderful day and happy lunar new year.
it's on February 3rd.
we will be celebrating at the bank and we will be celebrating the lunar celebration.
feel free to join us.
>> what's the date of that?
>> February the 5th.
I believe I sent you an invitation.
>> two of us will be out of town on that day unfortunately.
>> you can join us next year.
>> right.
>> we'll be celebrating next year as well.
>> all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you all.
>> we enjoy the new year's celebration this past Saturday, by the way.
>> yes, at the asian-american community center.
>> this was at night.
>> I知 sorry.
>> yes, Sam was at the dinner.
>> don't say dinner, just say celebration.
>> celebration.
it was a party.
>> thank you all very much.
look forward to working with you on this fascinating opportunity.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, February, 2011 2:19 PM
