Mayor Salinas to Travel to DC and Tucson to Advance Laredo’s Agenda
Written by Post Public Information Representative, Jan 16, 2011, Comments Off
Courtesy Xochitl Mora,
City of Laredo Mayor Raul G. Salinas will travel to Washington over the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday to join more than 250 of the nation’s mayors for the 79th Winter Meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. As a member of the Advisory Board Mayor Salinas will have a very full schedule. A complete agenda can be found at http://www.usmayors.org/79thWinterMeeting/documents/agenda.pdf, while a list of pre-registered mayors can be found at http://www.usmayors.org/79thWinterMeeting/PreregisteredMayors.asp
Mayor Salinas has been asked by U.S. Conference of Mayors President City of Burnsville Mayor Elizabeth B. Kautz and Conference Vice President, City of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, to assume a leadership role on the Conference of Mayors’ Homeland Security Committee and Immigration Reform Task Force. Mayor Salinas crafted the Conference of Mayor’s policy statement on immigration with Villaraigosa, highlighting the role Laredo plays in Homeland Security.
In addition to his leadership obligations, Mayor Salinas will participate in meetings with Congressional and Obama Administration leaders to address the federal agenda’s impact on job creation and economic growth in Laredo. This agenda includes a special Mayors-Only Strategy Session on the subject. Salinas will meet with Congressman Cuellar and his staff on Wednesday to outline the City of Laredo’s legislative agenda.
Additionally, Mayor Salinas will leave the conference early on Thursday to travel to Tucson, Arizona at the request of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Alan D. Bersin. Believing that most solutions are local in nature, Commissioner Bersin is assembling U.S. and Mexican mayors from border cities to strategize how best local government can share intelligence, solutions and jointly meet the challenges facing communities on each side of the border.
“While I would love to stay in Washington, especially since the mayors will have an audience with President Obama on Friday, Commissioner Bersin has made it clear that Laredo and Nuevo Laredo are the model for cross border cooperation, and he feels that without City of Nuevo Laredo Mayor Benjamin Galvez-Galvan and my presence, the effort will not achieve the running start we all seek. We all need to work together on these challenges,” said Mayor Salinas. While in Tucson, Mayor Salinas expressed a desire to lay a wreath in memory of the victims of last Saturday’s shooting rampage that killed six individuals, and injured 13 others, including U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords.
While in Washington, Salinas will stay with his daughter as a means to avoid costly hotel bills.
