Why do I get the impression that this is a freeby vacation for city staff and council members?

"There's David Starr Jordan..." I'm pretty sure he's one of those who aren't to be named, at least in the PAUSD.

However, Hofstadter of "Gödel, Escher, Bach" fame is an excellent speaker choice.

How many 'sister cities' does Palo Alto need?

Agree with Bystander that this is a freeby vacation for city staff and council members.

Why are we wasting money on this when the city's so "broke" it still can't keep the libraries open 7 days a week and keeps raising our utility rates to cover boondoggles like this?

Any Palo Alto City Council or employee that travels on an Indiana boondoggle must pay for all expenses out of their own pockets. Not one dollar of city budget money should be spent on this. If there is a budget category for this then zero it out and move the money to fiber optic deployments.

Indiana is pretty well run so the PA city council chooses a liberal city to align with so they learn nothing except for the menu in the local hotels.

I recall from a recent city council discussion that Councilmembers are required to pay for their own travel to sister cities, even when representing the city.
Also, the current city budget includes staffing for libraries to be open at pre-COVID levels including seven days a Mitchell. The city is currently hiring the staff to do that.

@Resident, are you sure about council members being required to pay their own expenses? I just searched PAO and didn't find that info but did find a 2018 blog by Diana Diamond blog entitled Questions on my mind about Palo Alto" asking:

• Why do we have three or four of our city officials travel at city expense to welcome a new city someplace on this globe as a council-declared “sister city” -- and then they take occasional trips to visit our sisters? A council boondoggle, perhaps?

Wow, this comments session never fails to live below my expectations. The curmudgeons are always out in force.

As someone who knows Indiana and Bloomington, it's hard to say that a visit to Bloomington or I.U. is a "boondoggle" ... not exactly Belize... but kind of a "Why?" sort of thing for me...

Bloomington's county (Monroe) is always a blue one. I checked my visceral approximations on Wikipedia, and confirmed that Bloomington is about 60% of the county's population. Monroe County was 63% Biden voters (cf. ~70% for Santa Clara County), and I'd say (back to approx.) that Bloomington was ~75-80% Biden voters with the neighboring, more rural, towns pulling that down. Not exactly a visit to political diversity. The idea that they're describing this as a trip to encounter diversity is just kind of absurd.