Delegates from Russian Sister City visit Maryville officials

By Iva Butler
of The Daily Times Staff

Zheleznogorsk, which is located in Siberia, is the Sister City with the three local governments. The city that built Sputnik and Russia’s first atomic bomb signed the Sister City agreement with Alcoa, Maryville and Blount County in July 2000.

Visiting delegates from Zheleznogorsk are Tatyana Sinkina, the chief specialist in housing and communal services; Yelena Kozina, medical officer and deputy head of the Federal Medicobiologic Agency; Dmitry Zakharov, public relations department head for the city; and Limira Khansvyarova, the facilitator for the group. The delegate from Krasnoyarsk Krie, Russia, is Marina Romanova, head specialist of human resources.

They were recognized at the Maryville City Council meeting Tuesday night.

A special dinner for the visiting delegates was held Thursday night at Green Meadow Country Club, where they were given plaques, certificates and gifts from Tennessee, Alcoa, Maryville and Blount County.

Sister City Co-coordinator and Alcoa Assistant City Manager Bill Hammon presented them with plaques from Alcoa Mayor Don Mull containing crossed American and Russian flags commending them for fostering mutual understanding in the initiative for world peace.

They received proclamations from the General Assembly and Rep. Doug Overbey honoring them on their visit.

Sister City Co-coordinator John Randolph, a nuclear chemist at Oak, Ridge, gave them a stand of flags, representing America, Tennessee the city of Alcoa and Russia. He also presented them with artist prints by Robert Tino, who paints scenes from the Smoky Mountains.

At the dinner program, Randolph said he thinks the landfill that he and Hammon and Zheleznogorsk officials have been working toward for for the city of Zheleznogorsk is “very close to coming to fruition.”

Maryville Vice Mayor Tom Taylor said that the Blount County Public Landfill, which is operated by Alcoa, is one of the first things many delegates want to visit.

Extra education

Randolph also said that we now have a professional grant writer in Washington helping with Zheleznogorsk projects.

The first three involve studying the use of hand sanitizers by elementary school children to see how colds are spread; teaching high school students how to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR); and smoking cessation among middle school students.

Randolph said one of the things American delegates like about the Russian school program is their teaching small children fluent use of foreign languages. He would like to see such a study done in local schools.

“I believe if you learn a foreign language, it helps discipline the mind, and if you learn arts, it also helps discipline the mind,” he said.

Taylor said “their kids spend a lot of time after school in dancing, fine arts and sculpture.”

The group will have been here a week and half before leaving Sunday for Siberia.

Under the Sister City program, delegates from the cities come to learn how the different governments operate. They stay with host families in the Sister Cities.

Maryville Vice Mayor Tom Taylor and his wife, Nan, have served as a host family almost since the program began in 2000.

In fact, Taylor, Randolph, Hammon, Maryville City Manager Greg McClain, Alcoa City Manager Mark Johnson and Blount Chamber CEO Fred Forster formed a local delegation that visited Zheleznogorsk in April 2005.

Following the Maryville City Council meeting, Taylor used his experiences in actually visiting and also talking with the Russians to explain the way their city and state operates.

The delegate he relates most to is Tatyana Sinkina, city engineer department head in Russia.

“All the property is owned by the government, including the housing. She is over housing, water. roads and streets and all the utilities,” Taylor said.

“Zheleznogorsk has 100,000 residents and there are very few single family homes. Everyone lives in apartments. She is responsible for 950 apartment buildings. There is row after row of four- and five-story apartment buildings,” he said.

“Water and heating issues in the flats built over 40 years ago is a main problem for her,” he said.

Like Oak Ridge

Zheleznogorsk was built like Oak Ridge, communities that were established to come up with nuclear programs, he said.

The result today is that “there are a lot of multi-generational families living in single apartments. They love it. Because of that, their families are very close,” Taylor said.

“After supper the family cleans up the kitchen and the children get their homework on the cleared supper table. The grandparents and mother and father are there to help the children with their school work. Typically the family does not watch much TV after supper,” Taylor said.

Since all land is state owned, Sinkina is also responsible for the cemeteries.
Taylor is president of the Magnolia Cemetery Association in Maryville, which operates in part off interest from money in a bank.

Taylor said this idea is totally foreign to the Russians. They can put money in a bank, but the banks pay no interest. “When I explained how we use the interest to operate, all I got was a blank look. If the bank fails there, you’re just out of luck.”

Russians can start their own small businesses under the state run government, but it’s not easy.

“It is tough to start a small business there because there are so many hurdles. They can’t mortgage their houses to start a business because they don’t own any property.” he said.

In a session with Maryville City Manager Greg McClain, one of the delegates asked him how the city decides how many grocery stores to allow in Maryville. When she learned anyone can start a grocery the woman wanted to know what the city does if there are more grocery stores than needed.

McClain told her that the better ones survive, a concept that perturbed her because that means some people loose their investment if the business fails.

Sisters in security

“In Zheleznogorsk, all the heat is free and comes from steam created by cooling from a nuclear reactor. A by-product of the nuclear reactor is weapons-grade plutonium. With the nonproliferation treaty between the U.S. and Russia, they have to dispose of that plutonium,” he said.

That nuclear reactor is what allows Zheleznogorsk to be part of the Sister City organization. “To be a part of the program, cities must be tied directly to weapons of mass destruction. We’re close enough to Oak Ridge to quality,” Taylor said.

“Some Russian cities have huge caches of nerve gas and nuclear-grade plutonium. There is always the fear that it will get to the open market. The Sister Cities organization was formed to combat the misuse of weapons of mass destruction,” Taylor explained.

“The Zheleznogorsk reactor is old. They are trying to get rid of it and get rid of the nuclear weapons. The problem is that jobs and heat are generated by the reactor.” he said.

“What we’re working on is getting them some kind of economy over there so they can get rid of the nuclear reactor. The the nuclear nonproliferation treaty says eventually they have to shut that reactor down. We’re working toward a solution on it. Building a coal fired plant to provide heat appears to be a solution, or some other alternate fuel. Siberia has a lot of coal,” Taylor said.

Of the other visiting delegates, Taylor said Marina Romanova is mostly an administrator in charge of human resources. “There are a lot of employees in city government in Zheleznogorsk.”

Dmitry Zakharov is a young man over public relations in the city. “He is very inquisitive because we have a much better public relations network over here, so he’s studying very hard,” Taylor said.

“Yelena Kozina is head of the public health organization. They have a pretty good public health system over there. They have a lot of people who are nurse practitioners, not MDs, but they can write prescriptions and treat illnesses. They have a huge cadre of these people who make health care very available to the population, That may be one of the things we’re going to see about over here,” Taylor said.

At the end of the dinner Thursday, resident and Sister City organizer Howard Kerr said that his hopes for the New Year are to get more people involved in the Sister City program locally and for more citizens from both cities to exchange visits.