Costs for airfare, lodging and meals listed for mayor and other unspecified city representatives

UPDATE: Tuesday, Aug. 12

City officials released expense records for a six-day trip to Ashland’s sister city, Guanajuato, Mexico, by Mayor Tonya Graham and three city officials.

In a Thursday, Aug. 7 email, Dorinda Cottle, Ashland communications officer, noted that the travel expenses were available on the city’s website.

The trip included Graham; Cottle; Chris Chambers, forestry officer for Ashland Fire & Rescue; and Mike Morrison, deputy director of Ashland Public Works.

Expenses for unspecified city representatives, which included Chambers and Morrison, totaled $5,228.59. The costs included airfare, lodging, and meals.

Graham said lodging for her was provided by the mayor of Guanajuato.

The release follows a July 16 public records request from Ashland.news. A week later, Ashland officials provided a partial expense report that listed $5,439.03. The records did not appear to reflect all expenses related to the trip. Cottle said this was due to some expenses not yet being processed by the city’s finance department at the time.

Cottle also said that the costs included a separate July 4 visit to Ashland by Guanajuato’s mayor and an unspecified number of representatives. The expense report does not indicate which costs were associated with which trip.

— Steve Mitchell, Ashland.news

ORIGINAL POST

By Damian Mann for Ashland.news

A recent six-day trip to Ashland’s sister city, Guanajuato, Mexico, by Mayor Tonya Graham and three city officials cemented the half-century relationship between the two communities.

“Guanajuato Mayor Samantha Smith and I signed a document for another 55 years as sister cities,” Graham said.

The mayor was joined on the June 18-23 trip by Chris Chambers, forestry officer for Ashland Fire & Rescue, Mike Morrison, deputy director for Ashland Public Works, and Dorinda Cottle, Ashland communications officer.

This was the second out-of-country trip by Graham this year, following a June 4-9 stay in Sviatohirsk, Ukraine, for $3,800.

During her stay in Guanajuato, Graham said lodging was provided by the mayor of Guanajuato.

“Mayor Smith hosted me at a hotel,” she said.

Despite passage of more than a week after a public records request was filed by Ashland.news, the city of Ashland couldn’t provide a complete accounting of the Guanajuato trip.

Cottle said it was her understanding that not all the expenses had been processed by the finance department and the city recorder.

Initially, the city provided a partial expense report that totaled $5,439.03. However, Cottle said the expense report also included costs from a separate July 4 visit to Ashland by Guanajuato’s mayor and other representatives.

The report didn’t indicate which costs were associated with which trip. The incomplete expense report didn’t list how much it cost for lodging for the three city officials who visited Guanajuato.

“It’s my understanding that not all of the information has been processed by finance,” Cottle stated in an email on Friday, Aug. 1. “I wish I had a timeline for you.”

Other organizations, such as the Lions Club International, the Ashland Amigo Club and a student from Ashland, paid their own fare to Guanajuato.

Sister city relationships

The delegations from both cities have made annual pilgrimages, apart from a hiatus during the pandemic years. Ashland has a street that commemorates their relationship, Calle Guanajuato.

Graham said sister city relationships provide insights into the shared issues that other cities wrestle with over how to deal with wildfires, sanitation, and water.

She said Guanajuato is looking at similar forest management efforts that have been undertaken in the Ashland watershed, and that the city is also struggling to find a solution to its trash management, which will require building a new landfill.

“It’s always good to have an important effort to maintain relationships with people who don’t share a similar language and culture,” she said.

Graham said she doesn’t speak Spanish, but she said, “I promised Mayor Smith that I will learn to speak it.”

Like Ashland, Guanajuato is facing new challenges from climate change, including droughts and wildfires, she said.

Besides receiving the keys to the city, Graham said the people of Guanajuato were extremely gracious.

The famous Teatro Juarez in the downtown area was on Graham’s wish list to visit, but the timing wasn’t right.

After a dinner and festivities one night, she asked if she could take a peek inside the theater, known for its mix of architectural styles.

“They said I couldn’t just take a peek,” Graham said. “They took us on a tour at 10:30 at night to share with us the full experience of their theater.”

Downtown Guanajuato is a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site. UNESCO, the U.N. cultural agency, designates heritage sites, cultural or natural, for places around the world that have “outstanding universal value to humanity.” Other sites include the Grand Canyon and the Taj Mahal in India, among others.

Chris Chambers of Ashland Fire & Rescue said Guanajuato has a management plan to thin its watershed to help prevent a wildfire from destroying its municipal drinking water, similar to the local effort to thin dead and dying trees in the Ashland watershed.  “They have wildfires all the time in their area,” he said.

Because of Ashland’s efforts in its watershed, Guanajuato, aided financially by the Mexican government, has a 10-person crew that routinely thins its watershed forests, which are more than an hour drive from the city.

“They’re really proud of their new program,” he said. “They came up to Ashland to do training, and they took all that back and put it to work.”

While the thinning crews are paid by the Mexican government, the firefighters, or “bomberos,” in Guanajuato are volunteers, Chambers said.

“I learned that they are incredibly motivated, and they get things working quickly,” he said.

Aug. 7: Updated the photo caption and article excerpt to replace the word “concerns” with “questions” regarding the cost of the mayor’s second international trip.

Reach freelance writer Damian Mann at dmannnews@gmail.com.