Mayors of San Luis and San Luis R.C. to be honored by U.S.-Mexico CoC
Organization recognizes pair’s efforts to speed flow of traffic at border
SAN LUIS, Ariz. — Gerardo Sanchez, the mayor of this city, and his counterpart in San Luis Rio Colorado, Son., will be honored on Wednesday by the U.S.-Mexico Chamber of Commerce for their efforts to promote better flow of traffic between the two nations.
Sanchez and Enrique Reina, of San Luis Rio Colorado, will be honored at a reception following a congressional roundtable discussion on the first day of the chamber’s annual Board of Directors Meeting & Good Neighbor Awards Gala in Washington, D.C.
The honor recognizes the mayors’ joint efforts to lobby federal officials for upgrades at border crossings to improve the flow of vehicle and pedestrian traffic between two cities that depend on one another economically.
The honor, said Sanchez, “says a lot about how we have worked together since the day we met.”
Sanchez, elected to the San Luis City Council in 2008, has served as the city’s mayor since 2012. Reina previously served as mayor of San Luis Rio Colorado from 2009 to 2012, then was elected to a new term in 2015. Reina concludes his current term later this year.
The Washington, D.C.based chamber, formed in 1973 by U.S. and Mexican business people, promotes trade, investment and joint commercial ventures on both sides of the border.
The reception for the mayors is part of a two-day agenda that will include presentations about ongoing negotiations to renew the Free Trade Agreement among the United States, Mexico and Canada, and about presidential and other elections in Mexico in July.
Businesses in San Luis, Ariz., and around the Yuma area depend on trade with Mexican shoppers, and San Luis, Ariz., officials have long raised concerns that long wait times at the border discourage consumers from coming across.
The federal government has taken some steps to shorten the lines, among them opening up expedited crossing lanes for people enrolled in the SENTRI trusted traveler program and expanding the pedestrian crossing area at San Luis I.
But the most soughtafter goal remains elusive: expansion of San Luis I to include more car lanes to handle lengthening lines of private vehicles arriving from Mexico.
A year ago, President Trump’s federal budget proposal called for allocation $232 million for expansion and upgrades to the port in downtown San Luis that opened in the mid-1980s, but Congress has yet to appropriate funding.
Sanchez said city officials on both sides of the border will continue in their efforts to secure funding to modernize the ports of entry in San Luis. Besides San Luis I, the city has a crossing on its east side, San Luis II, which handles tractor-trailers and other commercial vehicles traveling between the two countries.