Taormina Sister City Program

By Jeanette Gatto, Vice Mayor

(August 4, 2016) – The Sunny Isles Beach’s Sister City partnerships give us the opportunity to take advantage of a variety of cultural exchanges in the areas of business, education, lifestyle, and the arts. These exchanges can be very rewarding on many levels for our City as well as the Sister City involved.

To that end, we are very pleased to welcome Erika Raneri from our Sister City Taormina, Sicily. Erika has degrees in architecture and construction engineering. She will be spending the next year living in Sunny Isles Beach and assisting Chris Russo, our City Manager. This work program will give Erika firsthand experience on what it takes to run a city on a day to day basis. She will assist in areas such as code compliance, planning and zoning, building inspections, maintenance, and technology. Erika will not only have the ability to bring back to Taormina a wealth of experience but will also be able to share new, fresh ideas which can be beneficial to our City.

We welcome Erika and hope that this is the start of many cultural exchanges with our other Sister Cities—Netanya, Israel and Hengchun, Taiwan.