MAYOR’S VISIT TO SAN FRANCISCO CONCLUDED

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ Ulaanbaatar Municipality delegation led by the Mayor E.Bat-Uul visited San Francisco of the USA on December 19 and then left the city December 20 to visit Auburn of the state of Georgia. In San Francisco, the delegation visited City Municipality to meet leaders of several Departments. Ms Una Fannon, the director for International Business Development, spoke how the city became a leading innovative city through promoting new initiatives in biotechnology and IT with economic and taxation policies and implementing enormous projects on establishing technology parks. After this the two sides discussed development policies of Ulaanbaatar and San Francisco and joint frameworks to be implemented. Ulaanbaatar is to expand its cooperation with San Francisco, and the policies for promoting economic innovations and establishing technological parks are to be practiced in our city. Another leg of the visit was a meeting with professors James Fishkin and Alice Siu from the Department of Communications of the Stanford University. The Mayor discussed with them a current status of the democracy in Mongolia and shared opinions on improving citizens’ participation in the decision-making of local administrations and on Deliberative Democracy. The professors of the Stanford University, who are studying the Deliberative Democracy in Asia, agreed to cooperate in introducing this type of democracy in Mongolia. The same day, the Mayor visited the Consulate of Mongolia to San Francisco to meet the Mongolians who live in this city. Mr Bat-Uul highlighted the works the UB city Municipality is running to improve the infrastructure, to strengthen a good governance, and to fight against corruption. He also expressed opinions on how to improve the involvement of Mongolians abroad in making Ulaanbaatar a city of global standards. Present at this meeting were representatives of the Bay Area Mongolians, the Union of Mongolian Women, the Union of Mongolian Students, The Association of Shagai Shooting, “I am Mongolian” school at the “Ger” children’s center in Oakland.