Sister city cost query

A DECISION to initially endorse Hobart City Council’s pursuit of four new sister city relationships has been slammed by Alderman Marti Zucco.

The council’s economic development and communications committee on Thursday approved a recommendation to explore potential new relationships with four overseas cities.

A report presented to the committee had outlined the potential for new relationships with Incheon in South Korea, Kochi in India, Southampton in the UK and Jiri in Nepal.

The proposal still needs to go to the full council for approval.

Ald Zucco, who serves on the committee, said he was troubled by the lack of an analysis of expenses and said ratepayers deserved to know how much the new deals might cost them.

“This is about ratepayer money that we haven’t considered. [All] we know is how much it’s going to cost to fly there,’’ he said.

“This is a classic case of the cart before the horse. The elected members must not in any way approve this unless a full cost analysis is completed and the full extent of what ratepayers are buying into [is known].”

Ald Zucco said he was not against the concept of sister cities but said exploring four more at once was ambitious.

Hobart already has four formal international relationships — with Yaizu in Japan, L’Aquila in Italy, Xi’an and Fuzhou in China plus a fifth in development with Balibo in East Timor.

“It’s taken us over 40 years to develop the four we have,’’ Ald Zucco said.

Councillor Bill Harvey, who sat on the committee and voted in favour of exploring new sister city relationships, said the vote did not guarantee it would happen.

“It means we will continue to investigate the opportunity, and a further report on progress will come back to council,’’ he said.

“You can’t calculate the costings when we haven’t developed any relationship.

“We could estimate what this will cost, but at this point in time, the main objective is to see if cities or towns are interested in a relationship.”