So much for friendship. Ocean City’s Friendship Agreement with Pärnu, Estonia, started with great expectations in 2003, but seems to have ended. It’s unknown whether Pärnu will be celebrating the Day of Ocean City on Sunday, as it said it would two years ago this week. That was when the government of Pärnu designated Nov. 20 of each year a day to recognize its ties with Ocean City.
In November 2003, Mayor Jim Mathias was in Parnu with Shawn Harman of Fish Tales and Clay Stamp, who was the resort’s Emergency Management director, to formalize an exchange based on cultural and economic similarities between the two resorts.
Mathias signed a friendship pact with Estonian officials and had high hopes for it. After his return, he was gung ho on the pact, part of the National Guard State Partnerships Program pairing American cities with similar cities in countries of the former Soviet bloc.
“Hopefully, it’ll be enduring and it’ll be so powerful a tool of peace that years from now, it’ll still be something,” he said.
Part of the plan was to form a committee in Ocean City to work on various projects.
One of such project was an exchange program involving Wor-Wic Community College so Estonian students who would come to Ocean City to work could receive college credit toward their hospitality degree at an Estonian university.
When three Estonian officials visited Ocean City in July 2004, Mathias was optimistic. He said Pärnu had 17 friendship agreements, including two in Russia, one in Holland and one in Portland, Maine. None was very productive, but he said he promised Eha Ristimets, Pärnu’s adviser on ..........
......... foreign affairs, that the agreement with Ocean City would be different. His pledge, he said, had been to make the agreement work and to be productive.
Months went by and in January 2005, no committee had been formed, but Mathias said he expected the situation to improve. “We will make this work,” he said.
One major disappointment was the anticipated educational program. The available jobs in Ocean City for Estonian students did not meet the expectations of the Estonians, who wanted management level positions and considerable educational opportunities to go with the jobs.
Another obstacle was that the Estonians hoped to send a large group of students accompanied by a faculty adviser. It was more than anyone in Ocean City had planned or anticipated.
An even larger obstacle was the lack of money to pay for the student program. The Estonians had thought or hoped a federal grant would pay for it, but that was a dream.
In May, Mathias said he was not giving up on the partnership. He was hoping there would be an exchange of lifeguards during the summer, but it did not happen.
Last Friday, Mathias said Ristimets, his contact for the program, had left Parnu and he had not spoken to anyone there for a long time and Pärnu’s mayor, who visited Ocean City in 2003, had left office. It has also been quite a while since he has heard anything from the Maryland National Guard, which oversaw the matching of municipalities in Maryland and Estonia.
There has been no further discussion about the friendship pact and the “clock continues to tick,” he said.
“Our initiative has been more focused on the Quality of Life Committee,” said Mathias of the group formed recently to deal with issues of foreign students working in Ocean City. That group has yet to meet.
Ocean City also has an active Sister City Committee and some of its members recently returned from a visit to Finale Ligure, the resort’s sister city in Italy.
“We might not be batting a thousand with our international plans, but we’re maintaining our Sister City program and we’ve gotten the Quality of Life Committee off to a start,” Mathias said.
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