Sister-city panel meeting with Rochester tonight

The Memorial Day parade is on the agenda for members of the Rochester-Rochester Hills sister-city committee, which has a public meeting tonight.

The committee meets four times a year, to find ways for the two communities to work together. In addition to the Memorial Day parade, the committee has coordinated shared art projects, suggesting the best location in a small community like Rochester and how to get people to find sites in Rochester Hills, Michigan’s 14th largest city with more than 75,000 residents and nearly 33-square miles of land.

Rochester City Councilman Doug Gould is on the six-person committee and said he’s never seen a member of the public attend the meetings. The two other Rochester members of the committee are Marilyn Trent and Mark Albrecht. Rochester Hills representatives are David Blair, Theresa Mungioli and David Walker.

“Our meetings tend to have brief agendas,” Gould said. In April, they heard presentations from each city’s parks officials. There’s talk of developing a dog park together, though Rochester doesn’t have the acreage for such an endeavor, according to city manager Nik Banda.

Today’s meeting will focus on data from the Memorial Day parade, which returned last year after a long break and included Oakland Township. Gould said this year’s parade was bigger, with the addition of Scout troops handing out flags and the Rochester High School marching band.

“We’ll talk about what went right, what went wrong and what we can do differently next year,” he said.

The sister-city committee meeting is at 5 p.m. today in Conference Room 130 of Rochester Hills City Hall, 1000 Rochester Hills Drive.