Mayor to Lead Delegation on Sister-City Trip : Exchange: Two former Irvine council members are criticizing Sally Anne Sheridan for taking the trip. Last spring, she condemned the decision to establish the relationship with Tsukuba, Japan.

Although Mayor Sally Anne Sheridan harshly criticized the former City Council last spring when it established a sister-city relationship with Tsukuba, Japan, she plans to lead a delegation of two council members and two staff members to Tsukuba in November.

Two former council members are criticizing her for taking the five-day trip, but she insists that it is important for Irvine to live up to its sister-city commitment.

“These are commitments made by my city,” Sheridan said Tuesday. “Although I didn’t happen to approve of them at the time, it doesn’t mean I can cut them off now and arbitrarily decide not to do it.”

Irvine established the relationship with Tsukuba last year and has received Tsukuba officials on visits to Irvine. Two delegations are scheduled to visit Irvine next month.

The trip, scheduled for Nov. 12 through 16, will cost Irvine $5,570, part of the $90,000 international affairs and sister-city program adopted by the previous council. Sheridan, who was a councilwoman at the time, criticized the expenditure and voted against it.

Former Mayor Larry Agran, who voted for the trip earlier this year, said the City Council intended the visit to Tsukuba to be for department heads, not for members of the council. Department heads would better be able to explain Irvine’s programs and learn from their counterparts in Tsukuba, said Agran, who was one of Sheridan’s leading foes on the previous council.

Cameron Cosgrove, a former council member and Agran ally, agreed.

“To make the most effective use of the relationship would be to send city staff people over, to send technical information, so they can come back (to Irvine) with the Japan way of doing things at the worker-bee level, not the dignitary level.”

But City Manager Paul O. Brady Jr. said council members are going because the Tsukuba officials specifically invited them. “The Japanese are very formal when it comes to protocol,” Brady said. “They like to have the highest level officials possible in these types of exchanges.”

Brady said he decided that only five people should make the trip. Since three council members wanted to go, he restricted the staff delegation to two. Accompanying Sheridan will be Councilman William A. (Art) Bloomer, Councilwoman Paula Werner, Community Development Director Robert C. Johnson, and Stella Cordoza, head of the city’s international-affairs program.

Werner said she thinks that it is important that council members go because no council delegation has ever visited Tsukuba.

Werner said that she was concerned at first that there were not enough business matters on the schedule. The agenda arranged by the Japanese included visits to an exhibit of a traditional Japanese farmhouse, a geological museum and several side trips to neighboring shrines, gardens and museums. At the request of their prospective visitors, the Japanese added more business-related items, including an all-day workshop set for Nov. 14, Brady said.

“One of the places we’ll be visiting is a toxic chemical plant,” Bloomer said in regard to criticism about the trip. ‘If that’s a junket, fine. Call it that.”

Werner said she also was concerned that four other city delegates are bringing spouses to Japan and will be taking vacations afterward. Sheridan is planning to visit Hawaii on the return from Japan, and Bloomer said he will be flying with his wife to Korea from there. Cordoza and her husband plan to visit their son in Japan, Brady said.

Air fare and any other costs for spouses will not be paid by Irvine, Brady said. Members of the delegation going to other places before returning to Irvine will also be paying for those extra travel costs themselves, he said.