At last week?s Dane County Board of Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Ashok Kumar of the 5th District introduced a resolution to create an official sister county relationship with a municipality in Venezuela.

Officials from Andres Eloy Blanco, a county of about 54,000 people, visited Madison earlier this year to meet with city and county officials to extend an invitation to establish a relationship between the two counties that Kumar said would be based on sharing goods, services, ideas and values.

If Kumar?s resolution ? co-sponsored by seven other supervisors ? passes, it would create a task force to help develop some sort of relationship.

?Once it passes, as I imagine it would, we would establish through the department of administration a revenue expense account for donations and a task force with various members from each community to discuss how we can move forward with some formal agreement,? Kumar said. ?Everyone in Venezuela is really excited about it.?

Omar Sierra, deputy consul of Venezuela, is currently stationed in Chicago to facilitate ?people-to-people? relationships between Andres Eloy Blanco and counties throughout the Midwest.

?[Dane County and Andres Eloy Blanco] share a lot of values and have things in common that we can complement,? Sierra said, adding the Venezuelan county ? seated at the start of the Andes mountain range ? wants to emulate the recycling program and sustainable agriculture that is so successful in Dane County.

Sierra said Andres Eloy Blanco and Dane County are linked because they are both pioneers in progressive policy, both socially and environmentally. Sanare, the capital of Andres Eloy Blanco, is called the birthplace of Venzuela?s cooperative movement.

?Dane County has a very well-organized cooperative movement,? Sierra said. ?In Venezuela we have more than 150 co-ops. The big explosion of cooperatives was in the last eight years. We still have a lot of things to learn.?

Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, recently signed a relationship with London in which Venezuela will provide fuel for city buses at 20 percent reduced cost, and London will give free bus passes to 250,000 low-income residents.

?In return, London will send resources to Venezuela to open up offices to better their tourism and waste management program,? Kumar said. ?It?s really, really amazing ? the stuff they have been able to do.?

The specific details of a relationship are not determined yet, Sierra said, but he said they will focus on commerce exchange and intellectual exchange to ?help build bridges of communication between our counties.?

Sierra said it is at the local level where Venezuela can start constructing relationships, adding, ?We always try to promote this kind of people to people relationship. We have so many things in common, municipality to municipality.?

Currently, Dane County has a sister relationship with Apartado, Columbia and the city of Kassel, Germany.

Kumar said the Dane County Board will probably vote on the resolution next month.