City Of Naperville’s Family Is Growing

The City of Naperville has another Sister City. It’s the beautiful Caribbean coastal city of Cancun, Mexico. Naperville has two other other sister cities, Nitra, Slovakia (1993), and Patzcuaro, Mexico (2010). The family is growing.

Cancun has one sister city, Wichita, Kansas (1975). According to Ancestry.com, wouldn’t that make Naperville and Wichita half-sister cities, or step-sister cities, and when you think about it, why aren’t there ‘brother cities’. Doesn’t seem right does it?

Naperville and Cancun connected in 2014 when the Naperville city council decided to donate a 25-year old ladder truck to Cancun’s Fire Department, followed four years later with the donation of an ambulance. The vehicle had about 50K miles on it over a total of 4,000 engine hours or about 12.4 miles per hour. The ambulance’s 50K miles over 10 years averaged about 5K miles per year, or 14 miles/day. I mention those numbers only because I am a numbers-guy. Other than that, I suppose it’s meaningless.

The bottom line is it was very gracious of Naperville’s residents via the council to help the city of Cancun. It probably could have really helped a down-and-out city like Jackson, Mississippi, or Karachi, Pakistan, even more, but it’s still a nice gesture to Cancun. In addition to being a beautiful Caribbean coastal city, Cancun is also known for being a fabulous city for money laundering, but I digress.

Here is the really cool part of the deal, if a Naperville city official makes a trip to Cancun to check on the ambulance, it can be a tax write-off. It could be a quick trip over a week, or weekend, just to check the tire pressure on the ambulance or check the oil level. Heck, I would even volunteer to travel to Cancun with my handy-dandy, trusty air-pressure gauge and do the work myself. What good is an ambulance if it’s not maintained properly.

Considering that, imagine donating the ambulance to Zurich or Bern Switzerland, of if you want to keep it more local, how about Honolulu, Hawaii, Beverly Hills or Atherton, Ca. I’m just saying.

Everyone appears to be happy with the deal, which is good-enough for me. However I do see an opportunity here with a ‘brother city’, maybe Green Bay (Packer), Wisconsin.