Mayors’ reunion

By Adina Moloman

Source: San Diego Red

During an event last week organized by the Institute of the Americas of the UCSD, Tijuana Mayor, Carlos Bustamante has met Jerry Sanders, Mayor of San Diego, for a bi-national conversation.

This is the second round of conversations; the first one took place in May in San Diego. This might be the last reunion for Jerry Sanders, as the San Diego Mayor, mostly because he prepares to leave office this year.

Even when the theme of conversation was about how do the two economies interact and the integration between a US Corporation with a Mexico Corporation, the main issue they insisted on is the little advances in securing funding for the last stages of the San Ysidro crossing port. The san Ysidro port of entry is being under construction for the last two years.

They agreed that since the Tijuana- San Diego region deals with the traffic due to long waiting times at the border, economic implications are considered; most of it as economic loss to the region. According to SANDAG, every year this border region loses around six billion dollars for not resolving the long lines problems at the border.

Part of the explanation that mayor Jerry Sanders gave, has to do with the lack of information at local level by the federal government, who coordinates the project.

On the other side, Mexico representatives state the new southbound crossing, El Chaparral, will be open during 2012, but will do no good since the US project is not coordinated to open with the Mexican one.

In order to make a change both mayors accompanied by their teams traveled to Washington on Sunday to pressure over the funds issue needed to finish the last two stages of the San Ysidro expansion project. Both mayors, working as a team, were holding meetings with Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Pentagon, the Department of Commerce and White House officers to discuss the future of this project.