The Hindu : BMP, U.S. city of Reno sign MoU

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jun 21, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Karnataka-Bangalore

BMP, U.S. city of Reno sign MoU

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE June 20. The Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP), on Friday, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the city of Reno in Nevada, U.S., for integrating strategic planning with Bangalore's development. An official delegation from Reno, headed by the City Manager, Charles McNeeley, held extensive discussions with the BMP authorities on governance in the past five days. The BMP Commissioner, M.R. Sreenivas Murthy, and Mr. McNeeley signed the MoU in the presence of the Mayor, C.M. Nagaraj.

The MoU, a part of the resource city programme of the International City/County Management Association, will help the civic managers of Reno and Bangalore exchange know-how and work together with common interest over 18 months.

Mr. Murthy told presspersons that the areas identified for cooperation included strategic planning, information management, preventive road and sidewalk maintenance practices, participation of citizens in ward-level planning, establishment of a one-stop facilitation centre for citizens, and management of sanitary landfills.

Pointing out that the deliberations were extremely useful, he said the BMP looked forward to work with the Reno city managers. "This will give us a chance to understand the working of a municipality abroad and learn its best practices,'' he said.

The BMP had introduced several citizen-friendly measures such as the self-assessment scheme (SAS) for property tax, trade licence, and so on. A one-stop centre for people to access information about such schemes was a must. Reno had a successful information management system, and the BMP would take its help in introducing a similar system, he said.

``Reno has integrated strategic planning with development programmes. This collaboration will help us develop a vision document for Bangalore. This will involve setting long-term goals for development, understanding their financial implications, and ensuring successful implementation of all goals,'' he said.

On the road development works, he said: "The city managers of Reno are impressed with our road works, and have said that this is the right time (after the completion of bond roads and motorable roads scheme) to take up preventive maintenance.

We plan to start a regime of quality maintenance.'' Mr. McNeeley said "Bangalore is an outstanding city compared to any other city in the world." "The MoU is the beginning of a long and fruitful relation that we hope to have between the two cities. We are looking at working with the BMP on all the projects we discussed with it earlier,'' he said.

``We hope to learn from the advanced technology in city planning such as the Geographical Information System. The sidewalks being done up here are much superior to what we have in our city; the roads are also good. With this, Bangalore can definitely find a place among the top cities in the world,'' he said.

He presented a pictorial representation of Reno city in the form of a book, a badge, and a pen to Mr. Nagaraj and Mr. Murthy.

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