The two mayors George Heartwell and Stuart Crosby, with members of the delegation.

The US delegation included the mayor of Grand Rapids Michigan, Grand Rapids local government officials, academics and manufacturers.
Grand Rapids is the leading US sustainable city, and the delegation came to the Western Bay of Plenty because of the region's international sustainability reputation, as exemplified by the regional strategy forum Smart Growth.
'New Zealand is recognised as one of the leading countries in the world in sustainability,” says Grand Rapids mayor George Heartwell.
'Your Resource Management Act appeared 20 years ago, you have been doing this a long time. It provides a national framework - a very important planning framework.
'In the US each county is left to its own devices and each rural district to its own devices, because we don't have a national framework like you have.”
Smart Growth, the planning collaboration between business interests, city, district and regional councils, is also admired by the Americans for the way it has brought the regional interests together.
'We don't have an equivalent in Grand Rapids, there's no integration between the two.”
The Sustainable Business Network also started in Tauranga, and the delegation attended the network's final Green Drinks evening of the year before leaving for Rotorua, Wellington and Christchurch.
The visit is the result of two years work by Tauranga-based Kuaka New Zealand, a company specialising in environmental and cultural field studies – educational travel.
Director Doug Farr says the visit is an investment. Driving the social, environmental and economic benefits of operating sustainably will take repeated visits by academics and business contacts.
'We are expecting university students will come out to study here,” says Doug.
'They are really keen to start up a long term relationship, and there's a heap we can learn from them.
'We do it better and in more diverse areas than anybody else. People are doing important things here. People just don't realise how far ahead we are here. Smart Growth is a globally leading concept.”