Council says it wants to build bridges with US
By Julie Waters
DONALD Trump is to learn that Ards and North Down is ‘open for business’ as councillors attempt to build transatlantic bridges.
As well as writing to congratulate the soon to be 47th American President, local councillors are also set to invite the newly elected Vice President, JD Vance, to come and visit the borough.
However not all members of the council’s Place and Prosperity Committee were in favour of extending the hand of friendship to the recently elected Republicans, with five councillors voting against the proposal.
But the motion to write a congratulations letter to Mr Trump and invite the Deputy President to visit was given the green light as eight councillors voted in favour.
Voicing her dissent, Alliance councillor Gillian McCollum said many residents that she served would be ‘outraged’ by the ‘trite and inflammatory’ motion that had been brought before the committee.
However, DUP councillor Colin Kennedy stood by his proposal to congratulate the President elect and to ‘let him know that Ards and North Down is open for business’.
He proposed inviting Mr Vance to the borough saying it was ‘important to make connections when we can, not least to the biggest economy in the world’.
He stated the invitation to Mr Vance, who has family connections to the County Tyrone village of Coagh, was an ‘important gesture to make’ and his own grandfather had ‘mucked around with the Vances in Coagh’.
The transatlantic bridge building exercise emerged out of a debate on how to strengthen the borough’s international ties with areas such as Virginia Beach, in America and Bregenz, in Austria.
According to a council report, it had been agreed earlier this year to close down the local authority’s formal relationships with Peoria, in Arizona and Kemi, in Finland due to ‘inactivity’.
The council would then maintain the ‘twin’ and friendship relationship with Bregenz and their Sister City relationship with Virginia Beach with a ‘view to develop these relationships in a meaningful way’.
Councillors agreed to nominate five members to a working group to develop an international relations policy, and agreed to contribute £1,000 towards the cost of a Glenlola Collegiate School visit to Tallwood High School, in Virginia Beach next year.
According to the council report, the council had previously contributed the same amount of funding in 2018 and 2019 for the school’s exchange visits. The cost is to be taken from the ‘small’ international relations budget agreed earlier this year.
Councillors also agreed to pay the Bangor Elim Church £1,500 hire fee for the performance by the Virginia Beach Orchestra ‘Symphonicity’ on Saturday, June 28 next year.
Alderman Naomi Armstrong-Cotter said she had met with the United States consul general James Applegate when he visited the borough over the summer and the local authority needed ‘to foster these links’.
Alderman Robert Adair said he had visited Virginia Beach and their relationship with the borough was ‘very strong’. He welcomed the orchestra’s visit saying the venue was value for money.
Mr Adair said Mr Trump had been elected and the council ‘had to work with him’. “If he wants to come here and the American people want to invest here; we want to work with all governments across the world to show Ards and North Down is the place to live, work and visit.”
All committee decisions must be ratified at a full council meeting at the end of the month.
