Saskatoon has three “sister city” relationships, one in China, one in Sweden and one in Ukraine. A sister city or twin town relationship is a form of legal or social agreement between cities to promote cultural and commercial ties. Saskatoon doesn’t have a governance structure to measure any tangible benefits from the relationships with our three sister cities so it’s hard to measure what, if any, benefits there are beyond those that may be intangible or symbolic. It seems we had a recent interest from the capital city of the State of Wisconsin, Madison, to become a sister city of Saskatoon. However, city council opted on Monday to indefinitely postpone such a request and voted to direct city hall administration to develop a policy on how to handle sister city requests. The city of Madison has nine sister cities throughout the world, none of which are in Canada. Madison is slightly smaller than Saskatoon at 255,000 people and it appears to have a similar climate, similar median ages and household incomes. The city is named after the 4th U.S. president, James Madison and, for the record, has supported every democratic presidential nominee since John F. Kennedy in 1960. On the surface it would be nice to have a sister city in the U.S. that is similar in many ways to Saskatoon. However, we need to decide if the relationship would be more business driven or more of a cultural friendship exchange, and what the costs would be in terms of our city’s financial and human resources. In other words, would it be worth it.

That’s Coffeetalk. I’m Vic Dubois.