Flashback to early January, and it was all smiles.
Just an hour before the 2025 Rose Parade began on a crisp morning, Mayor Samantha Smith of Guanajuato, Mexico, presented the Rose Court and local officials with gifts and an open invitation to visit Guanajuato at their convenience.
The foundation of a Sister City relationship was beginning to form, just like the city has with cities in Germany, Japan, Finland, Armenia, China and Senegal.
An ad hoc committee was poised to propose to the Pasadena Sister Cities Committee a new affiliation to establish a new sister city relationship between Guanajuato and Pasadena.
Members of the committee and Mayor Victor Gordo also met with the Mexico delegation on New Year’s Eve at City Hall.
It was all smiles on New Year’s Eve, when city leaders and the Mexico delegation, along with Pasadena Sister Cities Committee President Lena Kennedy posed for a photo.
But fast forward to Monday night at the City Council meeting, and it was a different story.
Multiple tense exchanges echoed through the Pasadena City Council chambers, over the process of establishing a Sister City relationship with Guanajuato – or for any city, for that matter.
The Council ultimately decided not to take action on a requested update on that process, but not before a nearly 2-hour, tension-filled discussion that included the head of the Sister Cities Committee accusing a councilman of “usurping” her authority, and not following city protocol.
It all goes back to late last year and early this year.
Councilmember Steve Madison had initially extended the invitation to the delegation, after lobbying for a Sister City relationship with a Latin American municipality – a bond he’d long been hoping to establish.
He’d laid the groundwork for this potential sister city relationship, which began during an exploratory visit to Guanajuato from Oct. 7 to Oct. 13 on behalf of the Pasadena Sister Cities Committee and Madison.
“I have advocated for years that we add a city in Mexico to our cadre of Sister Cities,” Madison wrote to Mayor of Guanajuato Samantha Smith in an Oct. 9 letter. “I am very pleased that following a recent change in leadership, the Pasadena Sister Cities Committee is finally pursuing this goal by visiting Guanajuato. My excitement and enthusiasm about the possibility of forming a Sister Cities relationship with Guanajuato is undiminished.”
By Dec. 27, a delegation from Guanajuato, Mexico, with the rest set to join them in the coming days, as part of a historic visit to witness the Rose Parade and explore the possibility of establishing Pasadena’s first sister city relationship with a Mexico city.
The delegation’s stay, which was set to run through Jan. 8, featured a packed itinerary of cultural presentation, meet-and-greets, sightseeing. Initially, that itinerary included a planned meeting between the Rose Queen and the Guanajuato Queen, a student from University of Guanajuato who was serving as a cultural ambassador for the city. But due to personal reasons, the queen could not join the delegation on this trip, officials announced.
It all made sense, and as some had argued, such a relationship was long overdue. As one official put it at the time, Pasadena has deep ties to Mexico, a high percentage (more than 35%) of the city’s population is Hispanic/Latino.
But in a challenging year for the city and the region, closing the loop on an official relationship had not come by September, prompting Madison to publicly ask for a progress report.
That touched off tense exchanges and finger-pointing that had some leaders this week worried that a moment of goodwill between cities was rapidly devolving into a major embarrassment for Pasadena.
At issue for Madison was why the process had taken so long. He said that after the delegation visited Guanajuato last year and a Guanajuato delegation visited Pasadena around New Year’s Day he believed the process was ready to be completed.
Guanajuato Mayor Smith has invited Pasadena to visit later this month, according to Madison, and he questioned whether the trip would happen and why the Sister City relationship couldn’t move forward, calling it “sort of downright impolite.”
“I’m concerned that somehow politics has gotten into this and there’s some agenda to derail Guanajuato,” Madison said from the dais as he formally announced his query on Monday.
Kennedy took Madison’s questions to be accusatory and responded by saying he had stepped beyond his office to try and push the process along.
“Councilmember Madison insinuated some very insulting things,” Kennedy said. “This is not political Councilmember Madison, not at all. This is not a hidden agenda.”
Gordo, too, then weighed in with his perspective. He said as mayor he is supposed to lead all ceremonial matters of the city, including delegations. Gordo said Madison’s letters to Guanajuato introducing a delegation and then inviting officials to Pasadena on vice mayor letterhead were not sent to the mayor’s office.
He became aware of the Guanajuato visit to Pasadena only around New Year’s Day when Kennedy reached out.
Gordo said he supports a sister city relationship with a Mexican city but said the process in this instance was not followed by Madison, who invited the Guanajuato mayor to Pasadena without informing Gordo.
“It is an embarrassing situation that we find ourselves in because we didn’t follow the process,” Gordo said.
The Pasadena Sister Cities Committee is an independent nonprofit organization that recommends international cities to become a Sister City with Pasadena.
Kennedy said the process begins with a group of 10 new members nominating a city and forming an ad-hoc committee responsible for all the efforts to demonstrate that the potential Sister City affiliation is sustainable with ongoing interest.
She said the goal was to get the Guanajuato process completed in two to three years, a much faster process than it took for the latest city — Dakar-Plateau, Senegal to be formalized.
Kennedy, and members of the committee in attendance, pushed back hard on Madison’s inquiry, defending the committee’s following of the protocol, and took issue with Madison’s actions.
Kennedy accused Madison of usurping the authority of her committee and abusing the power of his office to try push forward the city entering a sister city relationship with the Mexican city of Guanajuato.
Everyone Monday agreed that Guanajuato is deserving of the Sister City designation and described it as a beautiful city. Guanajuato is located in central Mexico, bounded by the states of San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, Michoacán and Jalisco with a population of approximately 194,000 people.
During her comments, Kennedy did not give an exact timeline for when the vote by the full membership would take place. She said the process was not being slow-played and was on track despite the challenging year.
“I want what you want and I want us to communicate,” Kennedy said to Madison.
For his part, Madison said his motives were innocent.
“You and I have sat on this council for over 20 years and nothing has ever happened to establish a sister city in Latin America, and that is truly the only interest I have here is realizing that especially at this time,” Madison said to Mayor Victor Gordo on the dais, referencing the context of ramped-up ICE raids in the city since June that have landed multiple Latin American immigrants in federal detention.
Councilmember Rick Cole said he was disturbed by the direction of conversation.
“I’m deeply worried about the City Council opening a bitter discussion about who said what to whom and when, because that’s not at all in the spirit of sister cities,” Cole said.
The goal is for the membership of the Pasadena Sister City Committee to vote on Guanajuato and then send the recommendation to the mayor by the end of the year, according to Kennedy.
“If we’re all saying we want the same thing, why are we looking for a solution to something that’s not a problem,” Kennedy said Thursday about Madison’s concern.